Break out your digital wallets! Miami NFT Week is back, starting March 31st. Here’s what’s in print
By Riley Kaminer and Nancy Dahlberg
Later this month, Miami’s NFT community hopes to prove it can withstand — and see beyond — the crypto winter with the upcoming Miami NFT Week conference. The three-day event aims to gather around 5,000 digital asset minnows and whales in a bid to capture the same enthusiasm it had last year.
Co-founders Erik LaPaglia, Ted Lucas and Gianni D’Alerta [pictured above] is hosting this event at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center. The trio has planned a packed agenda with around 200 experts covering NFTs, DeFi and Blockchain technology through workshops, panels, pitch competitions, creative installations, immersive art, performances and more.
Miami NFT Week has four main pillars: culture, metaverse, enterprise and web3. Big names that will grace the main stage include City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, singer-songwriter Timbaland, two-time NBA star Baron Davis, CEO Lin Dai, financier Anthony Scaramucci, Web3 Creator Swan Sit, Decentral founder and Ethereum co-founder Anthony De lorio, and The Miami Ape LLC co-founder Laura Rodriguez, who were inspired to start their company after last year’s Miami NFT Week. “We strive to provide a welcoming environment for all crypto enthusiasts – natives, newcomers and curious individuals alike,” said LaPaglia.
Organizers shared that Miami NFT Week focuses on diversity, inclusion and education in the NFT and Web3 space. Lucas, philanthropist and CEO of Slip N Slide Records, said he is particularly looking forward to hearing from speakers who have crossed over from the entertainment and sports industries into the NFT space, such as Davis, Timbaland, Metta Sandiford-Artest and 19 Keys.
Focus areas include youth and LatAm
“But what’s really important to me is pushing to get more Miami locals to attend the conference,” Lucas said. To that end, Miami MFT Week has given away 100 tickets to the youth at iTech and Turner Tech, as well as free passes to students at Florida Memorial University, Miami Dade College and Florida International University.
“Educating the younger generation about what’s happening in the Web3 space will be valuable information for them to incorporate into their future careers. It will be exciting to not only give them the opportunity to do that, but also to network and ask questions with some of the speakers about the future of the NFT, Lucas said.
Miami NFT Week also hosts a group from NFT Kids featured in NFTKidsMagazine, the first ever NFT publication for digital child artists founded by 13-year-old NFT artist and photographer Gemeidon. The children, aged 7-15, will have a stand, and some will speak in panels during the weekend. The Miami NFT will also host a buildathon. It’s free to join – and with $25,000+ in prizes.
Latin America will be a particular focus of this year’s event, with five panel discussions devoted to the region’s growing crypto community. D’Alerta told Update Miami that this focus on our neighbors to the south comes from a gap in the market.
“My partners and I did not see people from Latin America and the Caribbean – the people we see every day, who live here and visit here – included in other web3 events. These people were not represented. So we wanted to increase the Latin conversation because that’s what Miami is.”
“Now is the time for real people to build”
D’Alerta also acknowledged that the so-called crypto winter has led to a decline in the NFT market. But he remains excited about the opportunity that these digital assets bring, especially when it comes to applications outside the world of art and speculative finance.
“I personally am very excited about the possibilities for intellectual property, for branding, for loyalty, for games, for sports, for music, even literature,” he said, citing just a few potential applications of NFT technology.
A similar line of thinking was echoed by OneOf CEO Lin Dai in a recent interview Update Miami, D’Alerta said we will eventually shift the conversation away from “NFTs” and more towards what this technology actually does. “Soon we won’t discuss NFTs, like we don’t discuss mp3s – it’s just music. NFTs will be seen as a digital asset of some kind: a membership, loyalty points or artwork. Not a JPEG.”
“Now is the time for real people to build,” D’Alerta said of the opportunity that can come out of a down market like this. “Now it’s time for the stars to start coming out and new ideas will start to come out. And then maybe we’ll have another boom.”
You heard it here first. Now you have to see it to believe it: in person in Wynwood starting March 31st.
WHAT: Miami NFT Week 2023
WHEN: 31 March to 2 April
WHERE: Mana Wynwood Convention Center (318 NW 23rd St)
WHO: NFT experts and enthusiasts alike, from Miami to the metaverse
HOW: Buy tickets and learn more by visiting their website.
SCENES FROM 2022 MIAMI NFT WEEK
The picture at the top of the post: Miami NFT Week co-founders, left to right, Ted Lucas, Erik LaPaglia and Gianni D’Alerta.
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