Art Basel Miami: Pulse Check

Art Basel Miami, known for its vibrant atmosphere and high-profile attendees, is one of the most important events on the international art calendar. The fair typically includes exhibitions, talks, and special events and attracts collectors, artists, gallerists, and art enthusiasts from all over the world. Recently, with the rise of NFT popularity in the art community, a web3 side of the event has emerged.

On the heels of the collapse of some large crypto exchanges and the subsequent contagion, Art Basel occurred in the shadow of the stadium formerly known as FTX Arena. Although the audience was smaller than last year, there was no lack of enthusiasm among attendees.

I was honored to be asked to participate on a panel at MiamiWeb3, where we discussed Institutional Access to DeFi Trading & Services. Compliance, regulation, education, and ease of access bubbled up as the top principles to bring about increased institutional adoption in DeFi and web3. These topics came up over and over throughout the entire event as important issues to focus on and solve in order to usher in the next era of financial institutions and services.

My panel also had discussions around the movement of tokenizing real-world assets and the importance of differentiating between DeFi vs. CeFi. A critical use case of DeFi is to allow tokenized assets to be transacted via smart contracts, eliminating counterparty or custodial risk. Especially in the wake of recent CeFi meltdowns, the financial world should move from trust in institutions to trust in math and code.

Whilst at MiamiWeb3, I was able to meet many incredible women in the web3 space and attend a few well-attended women-focused events, which was a stark contrast to my usual web3 conference where I’m one of only a handful of non-men. The industry is growing and drawing in more diversity than ever before.

Beyond the institutional finance side of things, people are continuing to build. The metaverse was a hot topic, which, when combined with web3 via NFTs and similar technology, made me wonder how these new assets will be handled from a tax, accounting, and compliance perspective. We need to do better at educating those in the NFT space about the taxable implications of NFT creation and trading, as almost no one I spoke with was aware of the current tax rules. These issues are going to need to be considered and solved soon so as to not hamper the technological advancements that these big thinkers and artists are creating.

Is web3 the future? With all of the excitement and momentum witnessed last week, it sure feels bullish.