Inside Miami’s ‘Davos for Degens’: Identity Crisis as Bitcoin, Ethereum Slide and Platform Power Bites

The selloff hit before the cocktails. As Bitcoin and Ethereum slid in tandem with precious metals—and the drawdown deepened in the days after—Miami’s self-styled “Davos for Degens” exposed a movement wrestling with what it wants to be. The casino tables set up for attendees had dealers but few takers. Big-name speakers dropped off. And a last-minute rebrand papered over a trademark fight that says more about the future of degen culture than any price chart.

Roughly 1,300 people registered for the event, renamed [REDACTED] Live after a cease-and-desist forced organizers to strip “WallStreetBets” from the title. Banners were patched over across the venue. Jordan Belfort and Martin Shkreli didn’t make it. Anthony Scaramucci did—via pre-recorded video—offering resilience lessons that were immediately juxtaposed with a clip of Sam Bankman-Fried in handcuffs. For locals like Alex Hochberger of Web3 Enabler, the vibe landed awkwardly: an “anti-establishment” conference priced for corporate cards, with a bar open at 9 a.m.

The center of gravity shifted from “vibes” to “value.” Onstage, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said meme coins lack fundamental value. The Seychelles-based exchange still lists crowd favorites—Pepe and the official token tied to President Donald Trump among them—but Chen made clear that listing does not equal conviction. Others pitch a more structural evolution: tokenization and real-world assets as the next leg, a narrative that suits a community born from retail coordination but hungry for product-market fit.

That pivot had its own contradictions. Mezcal, the pseudonymous founder of America.Fun, framed his token launchpad as a response to what he called the end of Solana’s “trenches.” His answer: charge $200 per coin creation to deter spam and raise the average quality. Under the hood, America.Fun routes exclusively through World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin; platform trading fees may be used to repurchase WLFI, the DeFi token backed by President Donald Trump and his sons. Ogle, a pseudonymous advisor to World Liberty Financial, also advises America.Fun. Mezcal noted it was his first time in the United States. You can call that vertical integration or a conflict vector; either way, it concentrates economics and influence in a way regulators and users tend to scrutinize once volumes grow.

The sharper fault line, though, ran through the logo. WallStreetBets founder Jamie Rogozinski framed the rebrand as a platform power play: Reddit, he argued, fears the community’s identity expanding off-site. U.S. courts have held Reddit owns the WallStreetBets trademark, and the Supreme Court declined to review Rogozinski’s case in December. Reddit’s position is that it occasionally trademarks community names to protect user creativity and interests. The legal result is clear; the cultural takeaway is thornier.

Several speakers warned about precedent. Martin Masser of the TON Foundation called it dangerous, suggesting it normalizes the idea that platforms own the social graphs and brands that users build. He floated a thought experiment: if YouTube decided to claim MrBeast’s empire, what would the industry say then? Brittany Kaiser of AlphaTON Capital—who filed amicus briefs supporting Rogozinski—argued that what once looked fringe is now mainstream enough to provoke this kind of control reflex.

In 2021, a Bitcoin conference in the same Miami Beach Convention Center felt like a breakout moment. By many measures, crypto has since integrated with traditional finance. Yet after serial boom-busts—NFTs, meme coins—broad public embrace still sits a step away. That gap showed up in Miami as a tension between spectacle and ownership. Retail wants community, upside, and a story. Platforms want clarity, control, and defensibility. Builders say they’ll deliver “fundamentals,” but the business models on display often monetize the meme engine (paid launchpads, captive stablecoin rails, buyback loops) rather than replace it.

The FTX interlude underlined the trust deficit. Scaramucci acknowledged selling Sam Bankman-Fried a 30% stake in SkyBridge weeks before FTX imploded. He emphasized that firms can survive if they operate with integrity through the damage. It’s a sober message in a city that once emblazoned FTX on the Miami Heat’s arena and cast Bankman-Fried as the patron saint of a new hub—before a jury convicted him of multi-billion-dollar fraud and a judge sentenced him to 25 years.

If there’s a unifying thread from a subdued “Davos for Degens,” it’s an identity crisis shaped by three forces: price, product, and platform. Falling markets puncture bravado. Tokenization promises a sturdier foundation but risks recreating old gatekeepers under new tickers. And the legal wrangle over WallStreetBets reminds everyone that distribution—and the trademark on your name—still lives with centralized intermediaries.

The next phase won’t be won with theatrics. It will be earned by pairing retail-native coordination with assets that cash flow, rails that don’t trap users inside one issuer’s loop, and communities that can port their identity without asking a platform’s permission. This crowd doesn’t have to abandon memes; it has to outgrow them.