Medical marijuana sellers in Seattle welcome crypto, residents don't have to file income tax returns and the governor signed legislation expanding the state's acceptance of blockchain technology, but he's not a fan of crypto mining. Coinme and Bittrex are headquartered in the city, and a few Binance servers are located here as well, which is how CZ was indicted by the state and sent to prison. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for crypto in Seattle.
Fast Facts City: Seattle Country: United States Population: 3.5 million Founded: 1851 Most Common Languages: English
Jump: Crypto Culture, Projects and Cuba, Financial Infrastructure, Where is Crypto Going? Education, Controversies and Failures, Famous People and Former Residents of the Seattle Metropolitan Area
Tell me about Seattle…
The largest city in Washington is the gateway to the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.
It is known for its use of some greenery as Amazon's headquarters, and is the setting for popular movies such as Sleepless Seattle and The Ring, as well as the TV sitcom Frasier. Several professional sports teams are based in the city, including the Navy, Seahawks and Kraken – hockey players, not a cryptocurrency exchange. It was the spiritual home of grunge music in the 1990s.
Many tourists visit Seattle to see the original Starbucks location and Pike Place Market, which features the famous gum wall. However, many know the city for its unique skyline that features the Space Needle built for the 1962 World's Fair. Like the capital city of Olympia, Seattle is prominently connected to the Puget Sound connecting islands and to Vancouver, Canada by highway and rail.
Rain and cloudy skies cloud the view over Seattle, but the area is greener than many American cities. Native American influence can be seen in the names of many neighborhoods and areas. Superfans of the young adult fiction series Twilight often visit, drawing in the nearby town of Forks.
Lake Washington separates the downtown area from Bellevue and Redmond, where Nintendo of America and Microsoft are headquartered. Taking Interstate 5 north leads to the Boeing manufacturing facilities in the nearby city of Everett. Like other American cities, Seattle faces challenges with the high cost of living and a large homeless population.
Seattle Crypto Culture
Washington is one of the few states that does not require residents to file personal income tax returns. While urban areas tend to lean left, many conservatives are concentrated in the eastern parts of the state and scattered in cities like Seattle.
“Despite his reputation for modern leftist politics, he has a strong anarchic/classical liberalism,” says Brandon Black, editor of Seattle's Bitcoin Metup. “I think people gravitate to that traditional bent and also the casual/grunge social scene.”
Governor Jay Inslee has signed a bill to expand the state's adoption of blockchain technology by 2022, although he has not been known to be particularly pro or anti-crypto.
Although the governor listed “blockchain” as one of the issues affecting the state's economy, it was said that he considered crypto mining companies to be an unnecessary use of electricity. The state's Department of Financial Institutions has also issued alerts against crypto firms allegedly operating illegally.
The Emerald City has been home to some small and mid-sized crypto and blockchain conferences, including ETH Watch, BlockchainNW Summit, TF Labs Blockchain Conference, Blockchain Seattle Conference, and NFT Seattle.
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Crypto projects and companies
Seattle has been attracting innovation since before the invention of personal computers. The luxury department store Nordstrom has been based in Seattle since 1901. William Boeing founded the airplane (and now spacecraft) company named after him in 1916. And Microsoft's decision to relocate to the Pacific Northwest in 1979 contributed significantly to the city's emergence as a major technology hub.
“Seattle has been connected to Bitcoin from the very beginning,” he said. “One of the first Bitcoin applications, Satoshi Dice, was developed here, and during the early bull runs there was a thriving cash Bitcoin trade between Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.”
With the advent of cryptocurrency and blockchain, Silicon Valley-headquartered companies including Block, Gemini and BitGo have regional offices or staff in Seattle.
Cryptocurrency exchanges Coinme and Bittrex are headquartered in Seattle, and some of Binance's servers are based in the area — unhappily for former CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was indicted by prosecutors in the Western District of Washington.
Last year, a group from Seattle offered crypto recovery firm Unciphered to crack a hard drive belonging to former Ripple chief technology officer Stefan Thomas. The data to access the drive containing 7,002 BTC – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – was lost years ago, with only two access attempts remaining before the data was lost forever.
Other companies based in the Emerald City, past and present, include crypto startup Stably, analytics firm WeMeta Labs, crypto and cashback rewards company StormX, Bitcoin mining company Luxor, cryptocurrency watchdog Protego and the Omni Foundation, which backs the Omni Network.
Crypto financial infrastructure in Seattle
In May 2014, Coinme operated one of the first Bitcoin ATMs in the United States at Spitfire Grill in Seattle's Belltown area. The restaurant closed, but distribution company American Green introduced its own medical-marijuana vending machine in 2015 that accepted Bitcoin as both tried new legal ground.
In the year As of June 2024, Coinme has listed more than 400 locations in the Seattle metropolitan area where you can buy cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Coinstar machines, and Moneygram.
Where can I withdraw crypto in Seattle?
Coinme lists several places where crypto users can exchange bitcoin for goods and services, including cafes, furniture stores and moving companies. One aspect unique to Seattle is the number of cannabis retailers that can accept crypto in exchange for “green.” Kush21 near SeaTac Airport is one such place, and ZaZZZ marijuana vending machines opened in 2018. Launched in 2015, it allowed purchases in crypt.
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Education
The University of Washington, with its main campus north of the downtown area, had an active blockchain association as of 2018, with membership numbering in the hundreds.
Nicholas Carey, who co-founded Blockchain.com, graduated from the University of Puget Sound (UPS) in nearby Tacoma, gifting the college with 14.5 BTC – worth about $10,000 at the time. UPS was one of the first universities in the country to accept donations in crypto.
Controversies and failures
In the year In November 2023, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering system at Binance when he was CEO.
Zhao's arraignment and sentencing were both held in a Seattle court, where a judge sentenced the former Binance executive to four months in prison.
In the year In March 2024, US Department of Justice officials charged Westside Ronins half-pro rugby player Shane Donovan Moore with defrauding him in a scheme involving cryptocurrency mining. Authorities accused the connection of using his “rugby activities” to get investors.
In the year In 2022, a former Coinbase Global product manager and his brother were arrested in Seattle on insider trading charges. Ishan and Nikhil Wahi are said to have earned $1.5 million from illegal trading for having knowledge of which tokens Coinbase planned to list. The brothers were later sentenced to 24 and 10 months in prison.
Famous people from the Seattle metropolitan area and former residents
Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates, known for dancing at the launch event for Windows 95. crypto author and educator Vijay Boyapati; Eric Voorhees, founder of ShapeShift and creator of Satoshi Dice; Bitcoin Foundation founding member Charlie Schrem, who first described BTC to the Winklevoss twins; Nicholas Carey, co-founder of Blockchain.com; Tornado Cash founder and developer Roman Hurricane.
If you have any comments to add to this guide, please contact turner@cointelegraph.com.
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Turner Wright
Turner Wright has been a freelance editor and writer for a variety of publications for the past decade, and you can often find him abroad. It gets its inspiration from a combination of ginger, green tea and dark chocolate.
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