The surprising maturity of the crypto-rave crowd

to mind when you hear the words “crypto rave in Colombia”? Perhaps an image of sweaty programmers swaying out of sync to thumping house music, some boorishly shouting over it to discuss the latest crypto-token they are flogging, their enthusiasm amplified by illicit substances. Given the crypto community’s penchant for spectacular hacks, rug-pulls and general calamity, something, somewhere is surely going dangerously awry. However the reality, as your columnist discovered on October 12th, is a little different. The rave—or “r” as it was marketed to partygoers—she attended was thrown by Stani Kulechov, the founder of Aave, an open-source protocol through which people are able to lend or borrow various cryptocurrencies. The protocol is one of the more successful decentralised-finance (DeFi) applications. Mr Kulechov hails from Finland and the word “aave” is Finnish for “ghost”, which is the protocol’s logo.