Besides that, there's a lot of western cryptocurrency enthusiasts in South East Asia for many years now, at startup events there cryptocurrency is a painfully common topic that crowds out the scene a lot. So I'd also add Singapore and Bangkok to the list, locals seem to have embraced it quite a bit too, a surprisingly large amount of big dollar billboard advertising for exchanges, etc around.
Costa Rica seems to be quite popular also.
https://www.bitcoinsuisse.com/news/what-is-the-fatf-travel-r...
People can walk across national borders right now with a piece of paper that has 12 words scribbled on it carrying $50m in crypto and legally there's nothing anyone can do about it despite the clear restrictions placed on travelling with $10,000 or more.
If you're looking to meet folks in person, conferences are great for that. I had a great time at ETHDenver earlier this year, although it was a bit overwhelming (15K+ attendees). As a result of ETHDenver, there is a fair amount of crypto people in Denver. Other good spots are Miami and New York. Any tech hub such as Seattle, Austin, Bay Area, are going to have meetups you can attend. I would check Meetup or Eventbrite in those cities and start connecting.
Outside of the U.S. I'm a bit less familiar with.
OP is also interested in the ecosystem. It's not like they're asking for the next pump and dump coin on Tiktok. Give them a break.
And many people thought the Net and the Web was going to be a fad. Who needs a web BBS when you have Usenet, why a forum when there are Fido distributions? Entire BBSes died because they couldn't fathom being on the net. HN's current demographic would probably think most of the Web was a hyped up ruse made to sell more modems.
