Bitcoin 2022 Conference: A recap of Day 2 of the crypto craze in Miami

Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith details several of the biggest takeaways from the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami, including Robinhood opening up crypto transactions and updating bitcoin's lightning network.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live, everyone. Bitcoin 2022 in Miami rolls on. And if their crypto version of the Wall Street bull wasn't enough for you, some high profile equity investors and venture capitalists are taking the stage as well. Here with more to break it all down, we've got Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith who is live in living color in Miami. David, you got to set the scene for us. What is taking place down there?

DAVID HOLLERITH: So, Brad, this is day two of the Bitcoin 2022 conferences you mentioned. And what we're seeing right now is sort of the pilgrimage of Bitcoin investors and cryptocurrency investors more broadly sort of sweeping into Miami in order to meet and converge IRL, as they say-- in real life. Cryptocurrency is obviously, it's about money and sort of value transacted over the internet.

So the reality is that a lot of these people don't necessarily see themselves in real life all that much. So what you have now are three stages of different sizes. And on the biggest, we've seen a lot of larger companies, especially in the equities market, sort of come in and sort of give an example of their sort of cryptocurrency focus.

And we've seen a few announcements. And the announcements have actually focused around, as this being a Bitcoin conference, around adding Bitcoin's Lightning Network in some capacity. So we saw the payment processor BitPay, as well as Square this week, add Lightning Network integration.

And then earlier today, we saw Robinhood to be the latest player to do this-- to add the Bitcoin network to their sort of wallet usability. So that was another thing that Robinhood has been working on is they finally sort of opened up their crypto wallet so that users can send and receive transactions and cryptocurrency.

For a while, that was sort of held off, you know? So the idea with the Lightning Network of why this is being progressed is actually pretty interesting. Bitcoin is mainly looked at as a speculative store of value asset right now. And the Lightning Network sort of aims to use it in a way that it makes it sort of faster and cheaper to send transactions. So it's sort of opening it up more to the sort of currency use case, which is often talked about, but not really used at this point in the asset's history.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And as you mentioned there, Dave, the highly firewalled Robinhood release in its crypto wallet, now, they have to be-- it's two million users, they have to be eligible users. And as you mentioned, that integration with the Bitcoin Lightning Network-- what more can you tell us? And who's able to use this?

DAVID HOLLERITH: So yeah, pretty much everyone in the US outside of I think it's Nevada, New Hampshire, and another state-- so 45 states can use the app. And this has been a long time coming. And for anyone who's sort of been following it, a cryptocurrency wallet service with an exchange is fairly commonplace.

So Robinhood, obviously, started off with stocks before they were allowing customers to buy and sell cryptocurrency. So they're a little bit late to the game on this. Now, they've sort of made it very clear-- they've been moving slowly as a way to sort of protect their customers, which is all well and good. But now that the wallet has been rolled out, I think there's going to be expectation for more to follow.

And you know, it's interesting too, because I spoke with Robinhood's chief product officer earlier today, and she has indicated Robinhood is expanding their trading hours, but also, they're sort of talking about international expansion, which is mostly sort of a regulatory feat they have to overcome. And they've said that they want crypto to sort of be their first use case internationally.

So there's a lot of thought of cryptocurrency for international expansion. And the Lightning Network is sort of the first step they're taking.

DAVE BRIGGS: All right, David Hollerith is there live from crypto week in Miami. Enjoy the rest of the festivities. We appreciate your time today, sir.