Royal Flush: Inside Crypto’s Most Exclusive Gathering

Co-organized by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto derivatives exchange FTX and the SALT thought leadership forum, founded by Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, Crypto Bahamas featured guests ranging from former U.S. president Bill Clinton and ex-prime minister of the U.K. Tony Blair to N.F.L star Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Giselle Bundchen. It was a far cry from the early days of “shadowy super-coders” hearkening the end of banks.

According to Scramucci, former White House Communications Director and founder of SkyBridge Capital, the event was designed to “bridge the generation gap between people that are transforming the world and traditional finance folks that need to see this and embrace it.”

said the traffic reached a record-breaking high of 4 million transactions per second on Saturday afternoon. While Solana continued to generate buzz at the event, the timing couldn’t have been worse. The blockchain’s wave of blackouts and service interruptions is raising additional questions about the network’s stability. Solana’s native token crashed to a 24-hour low of $83.13 about three hours into the outage before climbing back toward $89, according to CoinGecko.

partly leaked] closing session, former U.S. president Bill Clinton warned of the “temptation to abuse” new technology but described crypto as “obviously serious” in his remarks. But perhaps the most memorable part of the exchange was the apparent contrast between the ex-statesmen and the host. Tony Blair noted he was feeling “a little overdressed” sitting next to Bankman-Fried, who was moderating the panel in his standard attire—FTX-branded t-shirt, grey shorts, and New Balances.

The conference has also helped cement the status of the Bahamas as the next crypto haven. In 2020, the island nation became one of the first in the world to implement a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the sand dollar, and passed crypto-focused legislations that played a key role in convincing firms like FTX to domicile in the islands. Prime Minister Philip Davis told Forbes at the conference that the local authorities are actively working towards allowing Bahamians to pay taxes using the sand dollar and are in conversation with at least four other cryptocurrency exchanges looking to set up shops in the jurisdiction. “The Bahamas is not only open and ready for business but is moving to the forefront of this most exciting era of digital asset innovation,” Davis said.

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