Cryptozima is blamed for the 50 percent drop in attendance at the 2023 Bitcoin Conference in Miami.
The conference ended on Sunday with the likes of US Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of The Big Short, among others .
The annual event is the largest Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and cryptocurrency conference ever, but only around 15,000 people attended this year, less than half of the 35,000 in 2022.
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Last year's conference featured numerous celebrity speakers, including tennis star Serena Williams, psychiatrist Jordan Peterson and PayPal (PYPL) co-founder Peter Thiel.
Many blame the collapse in cryptocurrency prices - the crypto winter - for the poor performance this year. Bitcoin was worth around $45,000 in its last fiscal year, while the digital asset was worth around $26,000 in this year's fiscal year.
Due to the proliferation of remote work in this sector, crypto conferencing can play an important role in the digital asset industry by providing opportunities for face-to-face communication.
But due to falling cryptocurrency prices, many companies have reduced their travel and marketing costs.
At this year's event at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Kennedy spoke about how he would defend bitcoin rights if elected president.
"As President, I will ensure that your right to own and use bitcoin is inviolable," he said.
"I am a passionate and abiding advocate for civil liberties, and Bitcoin is the exercise and guarantee of those freedoms."
Read more: Bitcoin supply on cryptocurrency exchanges falls to lowest level since 2017
He mentioned that bitcoins were used in a protest by truck drivers in Canada last year to fight funding cuts.
He said: "None of these legitimate, peaceful protesters broke the law. But suddenly they found they had no access to their own money or bank accounts to pay their mortgages or feed their families.”
"By witnessing this devastating use of state repression, I realized for the first time that free money is just as important as free speech."
This year's conference featured 180 panel discussions on topics such as Wall Street's influence on FTX, the Bitcoin regulatory debate, and Bitcoin's nuclear potential.
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