Saffron Weekly (6/09/21)

What’s new in the week of 6/09/21–6/15/21.

As we return to work this week, we’re still feeling the reverberations of last weekend and the enormity of the impact Bitcoin Miami 2021 had. While announced last week during the closing ceremony by Jack Mallers, early this morning the bill presented to the Salvadoran Congress has passed. It has now been made official:

El Salvador has become the first country in history to accept cryptocurrency as legal tender.

This goes without saying that this nothing short of a gargantuan moment for Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and for financial freedom. Is this the beginning of a massive paradigm shift? Only time will tell.

Bitcoin Miami 2021 Recap

Braving the Miami heat, long lines, and the occasional stray iguana, Saffron Finance makes its way to the largest cryptocurrency gathering in history. Being at the epicenter of such a landmark gathering with some of the best and brightest minds not just in cryptocurrency, but in traditional finance as well, is hard to put into words. It was a one-of-a-kind experience and bountiful opportunity to network with incredible developers, analysts, investors, and so much more.

Over the following two days we would see amazing panels, interviews, and presentations that challenged our perceptions and excited our imaginations of where the industry is headed. While Bitcoin rightfully held the center stage (it’s in the name, after all) there were plenty of attendee-to-attendee discussions about DeFi and other cryptocurrencies as well. You can view video coverage the event and individual panels here.

On a personal level I always enjoy watching panels on topics that may challenge my own biases — so I would encourage you to watch as many as you can, even if the title of the presentation may be off-putting. I know Bitcoin maxis and DeFi enthusiasts don’t always see eye-to-eye, but there is a lot of common ground between us here.

While the main focus and big headliners seemed to be concentrated on the Nakamoto stage in the convention center itself, the more technical talks found their place on the Stacking Sats stage. There was a wide range of great topics discussed here and I feel they’re currently being overlooked by most because these presentations were more focused on detail rather than celebrity. Regardless, I feel both have their place at a gigantic convention like this — I just wish I could have attended both simultaneously with how much value they provided.

If you weren’t following the conference live, I recommend readers look through the schedule of the conference, find a topic that appeals to you, and then cross reference that with the available video coverage. There is an absolute wealth of knowledge to be found within this conference, and most of it now is available online for free (and if it’s not available now, it likely should be in the coming week).

Naturally, the monolith news item to come out of the conference was El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s announcement that he was presenting a bill to congress that would allow Bitcoin to be used as legal tender — and today with 62 votes that has been passed into law. It’s a surreal moment to have come this far, and we’re about to go a lot further, but it certainly has gotten the gears turning for a lot of people on how cryptocurrency can further help serve people in desperate need of financial freedom.

I’ll be writing a more in-depth retrospective on the conference at large once I’ve had some appropriate time to gather my thoughts — we’ll be sure to tweet it out once it’s up. And speaking of Twitter:

Limited Edition Saffron Finance NFT

Obviously not everyone following the conference could attend and we wanted to do our part to commemorate Bitcoin Miami 2021 in our own special way for those who couldn’t make it. Last Friday we announced a limited edition, Miami-themed Saffron Finance NFT and offered a signup form here. Thanks to the amazing responses that we’ve gotten from everyone, we’re going to extend the deadline for the form through June 14, 12:01am EST. All you need to provide is your ETH address and we will distribute the NFT when it’s minted. What a fun way to show everyone that you were there for the first year of Saffron! Trust me, you’re not going to want to miss out on this!

Saffron Finance featured in Quantstamp’s “Rise of DeFi”

Quantstamp published an article earlier today about the rise of risk-hedging DeFi protocols, and you likely have already seen a familiar face amongst the lineup. I won’t take away from the meat of the article — it’s well worth the read — but it’s wonderfully written and helps further explain the bullish case for DeFi in the coming months and beyond.

Weekly Roundup Feedback

Zack is doing a phenomenal job of summarizing the Saffron Weekly into easily sharable videos on what he’s aptly named the Weekly Roundup. How are you enjoying these so far? Is there anything you’d like to add? You can submit your feedback about the Weekly Roundup and anything else we’re working on via (you guessed it) the feedback form here.

Twitter Recap:

Let’s see what the buzz is around Saffron this week:

Time to bring on the summer!

Community resources

Web3 app: https://saffron.finance
Telegram: https://t.me/saffronfinance
Discord: https://discord.gg/pDXpXKY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saffronfinance_
Github: https://github.com/saffron-finance/saffron