Crypto was afraid to show its face at SXSW 2023

This strategy of non-awareness might just be the future of crypto.

For the uninitiated, SXSW is an event that takes over almost the entire city of Austin. There is the main convention center, panels in various hotels and concerts in the biggest stadiums. But almost all bars, clubs and venues also have a party or concert. And those who don’t host official SXSW events hold unofficial ones to at least capture some of the hype.

All of this is to say, if you want to set up shop during SXSW, you can probably find a place to do it. This is what made it so bizarre that I was able to go most of the week with barely a hint of words like crypto, blockchain or NFT.

In 2022, crypto blew the doors off the entire city. An outdoor venue with giant domes housed bombastic raves celebrating some little-known rabbit NFTs called Flufs. (By the way, I attended the event last year, and the 3D images of rotten, decaying rabbits still haunt me occasionally.)

Blockchain Creative Labs—a division of Fox Entertainment—was a key sponsor of SXSW 2022. In 2023, BCL was nowhere to be found. Last year there were dozens of panels touting the benefits of crypto. This year, the word “crypto” appears only a dozen times in the SXSW event schedule. (“AI” and “metaverse” both had at least 30 mentions.) Four of these were screenings of a documentary about (among other things) “WallStreetBets and crypto fanatics,” and one was a panel with prominent cryptoskeptic Molly White.

The minimal crypto presence at SXSW is not terribly surprising. Despite claims to the contrary, NFTs do not work as many of their proponents say they do. Many artists have rejected NFTs entirely, finding them to be an external headache, rather than a useful business tool.

It’s not the first time technology has promised to revolutionize an industry only to fundamentally misunderstand the field it’s entering. (Just ask Stadia how easy it is to build a gaming platform.) But what’s notable is that crypto didn’t leave SXSW entirely.

Instead, it simply came in disguise.

On the show floor, I saw a few companies that were still proud to admit that they were using crypto technology to insert a financial layer into an otherwise existing product. I saw a blockchain-based camera and a crypto-streaming platform—both with names I’d never heard of—in small booths. The biggest booth that clearly announced its crypto affiliation was Polkadot, a startup that “unites and secures a growing ecosystem of specialized blockchains called parachains.”

However, for each of these companies, I saw just as many (if not more) using crypto while trying hard to avoid mentioning that fact. Two companies claimed to be building the future of social media. Dig deep enough into their websites and they both offered users crypto-based incentives, but neither chose to use crypto or blockchain technology as a selling point.

One of them, Ascend, had flyers all over town. These made lofty – arguably impossible – promises, such as “no misinformation” (who defines what counts as misinformation?). Some of these promises were fundamentally contradictory, such as “no toxicity” and “no hate speech,” but also “no centralized censorship.” It’s unclear how the company expects to reconcile many of these competing priorities, but according to the site, the solution involves somehow earning “Ascend credits,” which are described only as crypto in a chart.

Another company, Arkive, launched a DAO in 2022 with the aim of creating a community of members who would use NFTs and the blockchain to form a museum curated by the internet, rather than a central organization. The group met at SXSW 2023 and even put on a panel on the decentralization of art, but downplayed the DAO and the crypto angle. Even the Archive’s own coverage of its SXSW 2023 presence barely mentions crypto.

In some cases, it is unclear whether companies have abandoned their crypto plans or simply prefer not to highlight them. Even booths for companies widely known for their work in crypto seemed hesitant to use some of the keywords closely associated with it. A screen for The sandbox— shared a small booth with some other developers in the area — proudly touted the “metaverse” game and sometimes mentioned being a “Web3” platform. But the fact that much of the game is built around NFTs on the blockchain was somewhat obscured.

It’s a dynamic I’ve come to internally refer to as crypto-obfuscation. It’s not that any of these companies would refuse to endorse crypto, per se. When asked, many were only too happy to discuss their vision of a blockchain-based future. But they seemed like calling attention unprovoked was a bit rude at best. In the worst case? An active deterrent.

Crypto has often been compared to the early internet, where the technology is exciting but not yet ready for norms. Still, no matter how cutthroat the internet was in its youth, there was never a time when companies avoided saying they were building a product on the “web” or “online.”

I will openly admit that I was deeply skeptical of crypto, even in 2022. There was already enough evidence of scams, rug pulls, disinformation, and scams to make anyone wary of the blockchain for the next decade at least. But I felt compelled to keep my opinions somewhat quiet. At a crypto-themed party that year, a friend shouted quite loudly: “NFT’s SIG!!” And while I aspire to her energy, I also coddled her lightly for fear of offending someone.

This year I felt like my skepticism had become the norm, or at least mainstream enough to express openly. Of almost everyone I spoke to, the few with any opinions about crypto seemed eager to share their doubts. Most people simply hadn’t thought about the technology. And besides, generative AI was much more interesting to discuss.

I doubt any of this means crypto is dead or dying. The technology has been around in one form or another for over a decade, and public interest in it comes in waves. However, its muted presence at SXSW suggests its proponents had learned a strong lesson from the previous year: The best way to evangelize crypto outside the tech bubble is to hope you can convince people not to pay attention to the blockchain behind the curtain.