Why Art Basel Miami Beach is ready and waiting for Trump’s bump

On the opening day of Art Basel Miami Beach, an Uber driver in a Tesla took me from the convention center to Star Island, a three-mile trip that lasted nearly an hour in heavy traffic. An artificial landmass between the mainland and the beach, built by the Army and home, at one time or another, to the Shaq, Diddy, A-Rod, And Gloria Estefan, the island was eerily quiet compared to the noise of an art fair on the first VIP day, and completely dark by 6pm. I ventured to the semi-private location to meet up. Steven Galanis, co-founder and CEO of Cameo, a startup that allows users to purchase customized video messages from celebrities. Last week Matt Gaetz is in and President Trump’s failed pick for attorney general will wish your conservative dad a happy birthday with a MAGA hat for up to $500.

I’ve known Galanis since his pre-Cameo days. We were in the same year at Duke, and I shaped he for the college magazine. But I haven’t seen him since he moved from his childhood home in Chicago to Miami, a city he never visited growing up, and I have questions that are probably just Only a guy as smart and well-connected in the Miami tech world as Galanis could answer. How did the town transform so quickly from a resort paradise to such dark criminal plots—Carl Hiaasen, Vice Miami, “a sunny place for shady people,” etc.— to one of the country’s largest tech and cryptocurrency hubs? And what will happen when the sector reaches its peak once again?

And I mean…reaching the top right this week. On Wednesday night, a few hours after Art Basel Miami Beach officially opened, sitting at the chic Greek Mandolin, my dining companions felt the typical buzz of a party. New York Times push alerts on their phone. Bitcoin has reached an all-time high price of $100,000.

“Oh great, I’m rich again,” said a digital art collector sitting with us.

Galanis told me his secret history of Miami’s tech and cryptocurrency craze. On December 4, 2020, venture capitalist Delian Asparouhov posted, “Okay guys, listen to me, what if we move silicon valley to Miami,” and was shocked to see that Miami mayor Francis Suarez replied within a few hours and asked, “How can I help?” Just over a week later, venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar hosted dinner at his home on Star Island, COVID-tested, and outdoors, with Suarez, along with the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Peter Thiel combine Keith Rabois, Founder of Shutterstock Jon Oringer, former Uber director Emil Michael, Former CEO of Clear Standards Betsy Atkins—and Galanis.

“It was kind of the primordial soup of this Miami tech ecosystem, and suddenly you had all these incredible founders and VCs deciding to move here,” Galanis told me. “I was trying to compare Chicago after the fire, when all the great minds around the world just had the opportunity to build the next thing. And in that Miami era, that’s really what it felt like.”

He was talking in a huge guesthouse next to an even bigger house, sipping expensive rum over ice, the drink of Caribbean pioneers for centuries, and offering me a drink. He had flown in from New York that morning, spent the day on calls and planned to be in an area at the Kaseya Center that night to watch the Miami Heat get demolished. LeBron James and LA Lakers.

These days, it’s fitting that the Heat are dominating the Lakers’ old defense and the superstars of their era. Miami was in the midst of a four-year expansion, with bankers flocking to neighborhoods like Brickell, led by another Chicago refugee turned Miami resident, Ken Griffin. (Two years ago me disclose that Griffin exhibited his masterpieces at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach on long-term loan.) singer Paul brought his company headquarters down here. Blackstone and Goldman Sachs have opened offices.

And the city’s rebirth comes at a time when Art Basel Miami Beach needs it most. The fair once held an unrivaled position on the world art calendar as a must-attend event from September to May. Now it’s squeezed between Basel owns the Paris fair in October and Frieze’s Los Angeles fair in Februaryboth started in the last half decade. It doesn’t help that the art market has been in a bit of a slump for at least the last year.

However, the optimism in Miami this week is palpable; The general feeling in the crypto scene is that the incoming Trump administration will be good for business.

“The whole thing is slowly unraveling. You had people who were very hostile and suddenly now you are replacing the Cabinet with people who are very optimistic and they are the holdouts,” Galanis said. “The second the US treasury buys first Bitcoin, it explodes.”

By the time the fair opened on Wednesday, the art world seemed to have caught on to a sense of optimism. During the opening hours, works of art worth tens of millions of dollars were exchanged. The day before the fair opened, a consultant stopped me on Collins Avenue and said he was trying to tell people that the “Trump push” was real — we weren’t seeing it clearly. It’s obvious at the auctions, but in a few weeks, everyone will be blushing and it will show in Miami. It turns out this advisor was right.