Guide to Melbourne – Cointelegraph Magazine

This “Crypt City” guide looks at Melbourne’s crypto culture, the city’s most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, merchants that crypto accepts and where you can find blockchain education courses – and there’s even a brief history with all the juices details of celebrities. controversies and collapses.

Quick facts

City: Melbourne
Country: Australia
Population: 5.15M
Established: 1835
Language: English

Australia’s second largest city may lack Sydney’s stunning harbor views, but it makes up for it with a focus on art, sports and culture. There are more concert venues here per capita than any other city in the world, and the city has produced heaps of notable performances, including Nick Cave, Men at Work, The Avalanches and Kylie Minogue.

Located on the south coast of Australia, Melbourne was not founded until almost 50 years after Sydney, but it quickly became the richest place in the world during the Gold Rush, from the 1850s to the 1880s. It is a highly multicultural city, with the 10th largest immigrant population in the world. The city also ranks 27th in the Global Financial Centers Index and is home to the Australian Rules football code, the Australian Grand Prix and the Australian Open. It was the filming location for the first one Madness Max film next Chopper and Beast Kingdom. Politically Melbourne is more left-wing than any other city in the country and is home to the trade union movement.

Crypt culture

Melbourne embraced cryptocurrencies early on, and a thriving community grew through regular meetings including Block chain Melbourne, Women in Blockchain, Web3 Melbourne and futureAUS. Karen Cohen, vice president of Blockchain Australia, recalls that there was a large influx of newcomers during the ICO boom in 2017.

“The meeting culture was really exciting. We couldn’t get enough space, so people watched our meetings on Facebook Live because they couldn’t get into the room because it was so busy. “

Talk and Business meetings took place every Wednesday from 2015 to 2019 at the Blockchain Center. Located at the Victoria Innovation Hub in the dock regions, the Blockchain Center was the heart of the community in real life, at least until the coronavirus pandemic broke out.

Melbourne has been home to many crypto exchanges since 2013, and a host of ICOs have also been founded in the city in 2017 and 2018, including CanYa, which operates an independent platform CanWork, and a blockchain voting company Horizon state.

While the pandemic has moved most things online over the past 18 months, Blockchain Australia has hosted a series of events at YBF Projects in Melbourne’s central business district (CBD) for the national Blockchain Week earlier this year, and Talk & Trade is now tennis at RMIT, between blockades.

With live events beginning as vaccine rates slowly rise, YBF Ventures will relaunch its blockchain community meetings, backed by Cohen as the housing expert for blockchain. “Unfortunately 2020 was tough with COVID, so it had to move online,” she says. “But I think if we could meet in real life, it would still have a very encounter culture.”

Projects and companies

Melbournites seem very interested in solving the problem of interlocking communication, with at least three major interchain projects with strong ties to the city. Founder of CanYa JP Thor helped found the cross-chain decentralized liquidity protocol THORChain, and some of THORChain’s anonymous local developers continued to work on a similar project called Sifchain. Melbourne Simon Harman has founded another interchain auto market maker, Chain throw, along with the privacy project Loki, which is now known as Cattle.

Web developer studios of 3.0 Flex Dapps and TypeHomo is found here, as is the supplier of a white label of blockchains Pellar, whose infrastructure processes 10 million requests daily from around the world. Government researchers Community Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and Monash University invented the MatRiCT technology (authorized to Hcash), which protects crypto from breaking quantum computers. NFT digital racehorse game Zed Run recently raised $ 20 million from investors including TCG and Andreessen Horowitz. Algorand also notes a presence in Melbourne, including through the Merged golden platform and Algomint.

Dear Elon,
Sincere good wishes.
Chris Hemsworth, @THORChain CEO, 2021 pic.twitter.com/4MDli8anpW

– Faith ⚡️ (@ledgermex) May 14, 2021

Crypto exchanges headquartered in Melbourne include BTC Markets, Cointree, CoinSpot, CoinJar, Non-custodial exchange Elbaite and OTC service Caleb and Brown. A major global fiat-to-crypto on-ramp Banxa is also based in the city.

New projects include an insurance platform Day after day, an embarkation and fraud protection platform FrankieOne and accounting software AEM. DeFi-focused crypto fund Apollo Capital – which is a major investor in Synthetix and Internet Computing, among others – also stands in Melbourne. Apollo’s chief investment officer, Henrik Andersson, co-founded the decentralized trading post SEDHEDO and a performance platform mStable (and helped with some ideas for this guide).

Financial infrastructure

The first Bitcoin ATM was installed at the Emporium in 2014, but there are only 13 Bitcoin vending machines dotted around Melbourne, mostly in large shopping malls. Australian banks have a somewhat cautious approach to crypto – while many banks are willing to allow users to send funds to exchanges, many users have reported being suddenly banned, especially those who run crypto-related businesses. “They’re closing accounts at will in terms of crypto use, and we’ve seen that happen, so they still don’t support industry,” Cohen says.

La New Payment Platform in Australia there is something like a competitor to crypto (at least in terms of payments), allowing instant, 24/7 bank transfers by phone number or email address. Often called PayID, it has been cited by the Reserve Bank of Australia as a reason that a central bank’s digital currency is not yet needed in Australia. There are hundreds of merchants here in the Blueshyft network (the other project of Synthetix founder Kain Warwick), which accepts cash payments without a counter for crypto exchanges.

Where can I spend crypto?

According to Currency map, vi struggle spend cryptocurrency directly in Melbourne at present, with less than 40 shops accepting Bitcoin. (By comparison, Ljubljana in Slovenia has half the population but 554 crypto-accepting merchants.) This has not always been the case, with areas of Melbourne cafes and businesses accepting crypto a few years ago, but then eliminating the option after it failed to take off.

Many merchants have used the crypto payment service of TravelbyBit; however it was abandoned after the company merged with Travala in mid-2020. The oldest Australian largest board game retailer in the CBD, Mind Games, willingly accepts Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. You can also learn rock climbing at Melbourne Climbing School, is suitable for women only Fernwood Gym in Bulleen, repair your computer at Another World Computer Center in Coburg or take some raver device from Ministry of Style in Collingwood.

If you rely on Coinmap data, note that some traders presented since then have left business (most likely due to the pandemic), including a cult bookstore. Polyester Books, gift shop Vera Chan and various cafes.

About 20 small businesses accept Bitcoin Cash, according to Bitcoin.com, including a Japanese welfare clinic Meaning of Spa and a merchant of ties and twins Jay Kirby Ties in the CBD.

Despite the lack of merchants accepting direct crypto payments, you can pay for almost everything in Melbourne using crypto through intermediary services that transform it into money. Satoshi’s living room allows you to pay any Bpay biller or bank account with 18 different cryptocurrencies.

Education

RMIT University Blockchain Innovation Hub studies the social and business implications of blockchain, during Monash University Blockchain Technology Center provides training and conducts research. It is Innovation Block Laboratory at Swinburne University and Deakin University, which both explore.

Controversies and collapses

Auscoin was perhaps the most controversial project to emerge from the city. Founded by Lambo-powered souvlaki chain store owner Sam Karagiozis, the token was created to fund the launch of 1,200 Bitcoin vending machines. The Australian version of 60 Minutes synchronized it’s a “$ 80 million scam,” which was built on nothing but “grand promises,” even though the ICO raised just $ 2 million. Auscoin was ordered by AUSTRAC cease operations after Karagiozis was charged with trafficking in 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of drugs through the dark net.

Elsewhere, up to 200 investors lost about $ 10 million between them when Melbourne crypto exchange ACX mysteriously collapsed in late 2019. It was powered by Blockchain Global, whose founder Sam Lee was instrumental in setting up the Blockchain Center.

Another local exchange that mysteriously folded was MyCryptoWallet. Founded in 2017, National Bank of Australia froze its accounts in early 2019. The exchange found alternative banking services and temporarily recovered, but later that year, users found they had loss access to their finances. As of April, they had not yet recovered their finances, and reportedly Australia’s corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, was investigating it. Huobi Australia launched in Melbourne in 2018 but quickly closed due to lack of business during crypto winter. Horizon state, a promising voting platform based on a blockchain, launched in Melbourne and later relocated to New Zealand, where it was about to do great things when a mysterious court case took place in Melbourne. skuis the whole project. In a happy ending, the community revives it from the ashes with a lot of equality.

RUP: Auscoin founder Sam Karagiozis is accused of smuggling cocaine, ice and other drugs, but he has now received bail to attend his brother’s wedding. https://t.co/aGuzMRcYcR

– The Greek Herald (@greek_herald) January 5, 2021

Notable figures

Influential of Ethereum Anthony Sassano; CEO of BTC Markets Caroline Bowler; Chief Investment Officer of Apollo Capital Henrik Andersson; AJ Milne of Meld Ventures and Algomint; CEO of Blockchain Australia Steve Vallas; Tom Nash and Alex Ramsey of Flex Dapps; Women in Blockchain International Manager Akasha Indream; CEO of the Algorand Foundation Jason Lee; Founder of CanYa and THORChain JP Thor; “Satoshi’s Sister” Lisa Edwards; Founder of Blockchain Center Sam Lee (also from the now defunct ACX); Professor at RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub Jason Potts; Joseph Liu, director of the Monash Blockchain Technology Center and inventor of the te behindnik behind Coin; Cattle chief technology officer Kee Jefferys; Founder of Emerging Tech Talent Karen Cohen; Ethitech head of education Anouk Pinchetti; TypeHuman director Nick Byrne; Founder of Auscoin Sam Karagiozis; and blockchain law specialists Joni Pirovich of Mills Oakley and Juan Bassilios of Hall & Wilcox. Melbourne-based group members and contributors: Andrew Fenton, Brian Quarmby, Kelsie Nabben.

Suggestions for additions to this guide are welcome. Please email: andrewfenton@cointelegraph.com