We were recently in Miami for the Bitcoin 2022 conference – the first time we’ve traveled to a conference in years and as a compulsive networker and superconnector, we didn’t realize how much we had missed the serendipity and synergies that only happens at in-person events.

This is a lesson in tech hubs and why they shift. Boston was long the center of technology, but with the advent of the internet, Boston lost it. Boston was set in its ways and had its processes.  A young, unproven sector was not in its purview: Boston was about Real Tech, not a bunch of upstarts with a bold vision of a tech future that might well never happen.

The energy shifted to Silicon Valley and in due time, New York. Other hubs sprung up around the country and the world, although with all due respect, our focus here is the US. The SV and NY hubs quickly took the lead, at least in terms of where the investor dollars were. And how did they become investors? For the most part, they were founders who had enjoyed exits. Boston might still have been in the mix, but as a distant third: it was not an internet hub.

As we sit here at the threshold of the Web 3.0, which embraces blockchain, crypto, the metaverse and technologies that have yet to surface, we’re also witnessing a shift in tech hubs. With the pandemic and the various mandates instituted in different states – some of which dispensed with them rather early on, allowing life and their economies to return to normal without seeing death rates spiraling – there was an exodus from the more Draconian rules in California and New York, to Texas, primary Austin, and Florida, not only Miami, which quickly became saturated, and to the surrounding areas as well. As we saw with the rise of Silicon Valley, visionaries will gravitate to the next hub: the future always belongs to those who can see it coming.

Another important point about visionaries: they’re not fond of rules.

No matter to where they’ve gravitated, they brought their families with them. They’ve signed leases or deeds. “Wait until hurricane season hits,” we’ve heard many a hardcore stay-behind comment, re Florida. Note to self: Hurricane seasons pass. We have no clue when mask and vaccine requirement in certain states will sunset. Or be stringently invoked once again.

This piece is not a commentary on either masks or vaccines. These are observations on mandates and their longer term affects.

Is NY and SV tech dead? Hardly. But New York seems to be focusing more on the metaverse currently. All well and good, but we are still years off from it being mainstream, and crypto is a big part of the bones of it. And that’s Miami, and when it comes to the backend, Austin. NFTs are fast changing the landscape now, too, so time will tell where that lot will gravitate.

We were having lunch outside the Convention Center, behind a large statue of a bull that had been constructed for the conference (and which may well become a permanent fixture) when a NY-based stockbroker passed by and pointed out that, unlike the bull statue on Wall Street, this one had no balls. A reporter went over to him and asked if he felt that Miami would eclipse NY as the new financial (at least crypto) capital, as Miami’s mayor had proclaimed that morning. The stockbroker repeated, again pointing to the underside of the bull, “No. This bull has no balls.”

True, but as any entrepreneur knows, it’s not merely about not having balls. Considering the massive tax base that fled New York and California for Florida, Texas, et al, it’s also about whether or not one can be easily cowed. Onward and forward.