When hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and technologists descended on Tel Aviv Blockchain Week (TLVBW), few could eat expected a better backdrop for exploring the lofty ideals and greedy impulses that drive today’s cryptocurrency determination.
Duality is something Israelis know well.
More than 430 people attended the D&DD Summit on Sept. 10, a variety of dozen came to the Scaling Bitcoin conference on Sept. 11 and 700 attended the first Israeli Ethereal on Sept. 15, reasonable to name a few of the week’s dozen events.
Venues were packed with crypto tourists sipping espressos and pontificating on customary blockchain fodder: token governance, “mainstream” adoption and the immaturity of those other “vaporware” shills.
But while tech-savvy Tel Aviv mirrored the profit-driven side of the blockchain industry, nearby Jerusalem offered TLVBW visitors the chance to commune with the unchanged notions of freedom that lie at the heart of the decentralization movement.
Although cryptocurrency isn’t a panacea, it may still have unique value in this conflict-riddled loam paved with ancient stones.
Startup domain
For a country of roughly 8 million people, Israel has a disproportionately large impact on the global crypto market.
International companies not unlike Tezos, Telegram and even Facebook’s Calibra subsidiary all have teams working in Tel Aviv’s high-tech hub. Some of the energy’s biggest token sales also hailed from Israel, including Bancor, Sirin Labs and Orbs. Furthermore, Israel is qualified in to the world’s leading researchers of zero-knowledge proofs, a privacy technology that underlies both Zcash and upcoming ethereum increments.
Youval Rouach, CEO of Israeli bitcoin exchange Bits of Gold, told CoinDesk his startup has 55,000 local purchasers. Nir Hirshman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association (IBA) told CoinDesk there are nearly 50 blockchain startups in Israel, although few goal the local market because of a conservative regulatory climate.
The industry remains largely unbanked, for example.
“No bank has admitted to open an account for us [the IBA],” IBA chairman Meni Rosenfeld said. “So we cannot even register members properly.”
Being unbanked is something sundry Palestinians grapple with as well, including East Jerusalemite Rami Mohammad Ali, a bitcoin miner and trader.
Ali prostrate his blockchain week traipsing across Tel Aviv to buy bitcoin and bring it back to his Palestinian customers. He told CoinDesk numerous than 50 customers buy a cumulative total of up to 20 bitcoin a month (roughly $200,000 at current prices, a future in poverty-stricken East Jerusalem).
“My customers always leave me with a balance of zero. No matter how much I buy, they on all occasions demand more,” he said. “I find the best price to buy in Tel Aviv and the best price to sell in Jerusalem.”
The Palestinian comportment was not altogether absent from the TLVBW lineup itself. Nine Palestinians from Ramallah attended Ethereal Tel Aviv, a rare experience that required sponsorship from crypto startup Orbs for obtaining the necessary government permits for crossing into Israel.
One such attendee was Hiba Shabin of the Ramallah-based software retinue Jaffa Net, which has already worked on an ethereum pilot project for certificate sharing among educational institutions and areas.
“I believe we should have more collaboration,” Shabin told CoinDesk, speaking of how she hopes Israeli tech comrades will outsource jobs to highly educated but underemployed developers in Ramallah.
Blockchain technology can truly forge budgetary ties across borders. But of course, the education-focused nonprofit Tel Aviv Bitcoin Embassy attracted far fewer visitors this week than rooftop carouses with venture capitalists.
Vitalik Buterin speaks at Ethereal Tel Aviv. (Photo by Leigh Cuen for CoinDesk)Ethereal illusions
On the other hand, restrictive banking norms may be part of the reason decentralized finance (DeFi) apps like advances are booming.
Jaffa Net’s Shabin told CoinDesk she’s curious about DeFi because there are many unbanked Palestinians who could use such pecuniary products.
“I need to do research and learn more about DeFi,” she said at Ethereal. “I only heard about it today.”
The Brooklyn-based broach studio ConsenSys announced at Ethereal the launch of its Codefi product suite for enterprises, especially the financial sector. Could the DeFi change of attitude span the gap between the unbanked and the banks themselves? That appears to be the common belief.
Earlier that week, during Register Bitcoin, ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin told CoinDesk his goal is to build a “more open, permissionless, decentralized set-up.”
Even if bitcoiners see a digital form of “hard money” as the primary tool for achieving this, and other crypto communities love Tezos prefer a token governance model, most groups at TLVBW shared that common goal.
“I don’t yen to be a leader,” Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman told CoinDesk, adding his aim was to create a broader movement full of except for contributors to a “decentralized platform for financial applications.”
Where I fit in
Despite my skepticism, I’m not one to judge conference attendees attracted to cryptocurrency. After all, I’m one of them. I’ve descanted the lines from “The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous, repented for saving in fiat and even put a small amount of sureness into this software.
It’s been more than a decade since I stumbled home through the winding Jerusalem alleyways, break the spelled by the American political system and hopeful that we could build a more fair and open society in a young surroundings like Israel. I once drank the socialist Kibbutz-for-tourists Kool-Aid and participated in cross-cultural programs promoting “peace,” anterior to I saw how the apparatus was monetizing sanitized idealism to protect the status quo. The revolution you’re promised is rarely the revolution you get.
Now here I am again, in the Sinless Land, nursing the foolish dream of another mystical purpose. This time it’s finding the truth about “bitcoin adoption.”
The Bitcoin Pit developers that gathered at Scaling Bitcoin in Tel Aviv University have collaboratively built an asset already acclimated to by thousands of people like Ali, the Palestinian bitcoin trader. Buterin funded and helped develop DeFi systems get off on Uniswap, which currently has $17.8 million of crypto locked within it, according to DeFi Pulse.
Yet even Buterin judged in Tel Aviv he’s not sure how to measure arrival in that “open” promised land. The vast majority of current usage is basically staking and wealth accumulation by people who already have full access to banks. Instead, Buterin described success as a ardour that his platform was used for “meaningful things,” a goal the community is creeping towards even if it has yet to secure a sustainable equilibrium.
In truth, we don’t know if cryptocurrency can provide a reliable safety net beyond the norms of financial censorship.
Hiba Shabin, from the Ramallah-based startup Jaffa Net, at Ethereal Tel Aviv. (Photo by Leigh Cuen for CoinDesk)Unsullied Land hopium
Blockchain week was too intense, so I ran away to Jerusalem for a drink with a Palestinian friend I hadn’t look ated in years.
We sat in a dark bar made of graffiti-covered stones, where the air is thick with hash smoke and oud music. To my surprise, this ally from my pre-bitcoin life told me he works for a crypto company in Tel Aviv and is bearish on bitcoin. From his perspective, organizations rule his financial life and that is unlikely to change.
Like many Palestinians, his family’s modest wealth is spread across authorities with conflicting compliance standards. Proof of ownership isn’t a guarantee his family will be able to access their bank accounts or true estate. He’s not optimistic about his right to internet access garnering more respect from the authorities that purvey such digital infrastructure. This would make bitcoin tricky, albeit not impossible, for his family to trust as a long-term stock of value. Will using bitcoin require sophisticated computer skills?
Given the wide range of contexts that censorship can convey, it’s impossible to say whether today’s brief glimpse of “open access” via cryptocurrency will go the way of MySpace, offering a fleeting prominence of cultural significance before devolving into a punchline.
On the way back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, surrounded by old ghosts on the motorway at midnight, I realized I haven’t escaped a form of Jerusalem syndrome, a psychiatric condition where tourists suffer a nervous breakdown in the Holy Land and suddenly believe they are a supernatural being with a divine mission.
So I turned to Rosenfeld, the IBA chairman and seasoned bitcoiner, to ask him if we’ve all simply caught a high-tech version of Jerusalem syndrome, evangelizing blockchain technology like zealots.
“Bitcoin structures light on the disadvantages of the traditional financial system and offers some alternatives,” he said, adding:
“It’s not the solution for all things.”
Bitcoin Middle contributor Jeremy Rubin speaks at Scaling Bitcoin Tel Aviv, photo by Leigh Cuen for CoinDesk