The most intense consensus ever seeks everyone’s voice

I have attended eight of nine Consensus events since 2015, when the first was held at the Times Center in New York. (The nascent CoinDesk event team got 500 people to attend and managed to sign Citibank as the title sponsor, something of a coup at a time when cryptocurrencies were still a fringe topic.)

Since then, and including the last three years I’ve hosted Consensus, the annual gathering has served as an all-encompassing watch on the state of the industry. For example, the chaotic, jam-packed consensus of 2018 captured the frenzied initial coin offering (ICO) bull market, while the following year was more muted, reflecting a bear market that focused on developers working with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), create 2 blockchains and decentralized finance (DeFi) prototypes that would later drive the next bull market 18 months later.

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As in 2019, the loss of trade, along with slimmed-down marketing and travel budgets, will ensure slightly lower attendance than last year, which drew a record 20,000 attendees from more than 130 countries. (This year’s final tally won’t be known for a few days, but we do know that Consensus 2023 will still register as the second-largest in-person attendance in conference history.)

What makes this so important is not attendance in itself, it is the topics that will be discussed. Right now, there is a confluence of seemingly disparate forces that combine to place crypto—with all its ups, downs, weighty problems, and silly sideshows—into an important place in the global discourse surrounding the future of money and digital citizenship.

Sure, the FTX debacle and crypto winter have dampened mainstream perception of this industry, and it seems they’ve contributed to another major talking point at this conference: America’s “war on crypto.” But alongside the unprecedented regulatory breach, there is also the background excitement and anxiety created by the rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence into the wider digital economy.

Meanwhile, the quiet but progressive engagement of traditional finance (TradFi) with digital asset technology – come hear Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson talk about what her 74-year-old firm is doing with music royalties – and that, whether we like it or not , governments continue to build central bank digital currencies (creating some strange friends between conservative and progressive opponents of them.)

Much depends on what happens in politics and technical development in the coming months and years. So it is important that such a wide range of people will gather in Austin to discuss such matters – developers from all the major protocols, regulators and politicians from inside and outside the US, academics, investment professionals, retail investors, venture capitalists, institutional investors, creators, marketing people and everyone in between.

This year, we’re taking advantage of the consensus crowd’s cross-sectional representation to bring stakeholders from different perspectives together to hash out their differences and try to collectively solve some of crypto’s toughest challenges, the results of which will form part of our first consensus. @ Consensus report.

But while I’m excited for the deep, forward-thinking conversations in these workshops and, more publicly, on eight different stages, programming this event has brought home the challenges of managing a technology that fosters such a wide range of opinions and emotions. People from a number of government agencies, financial institutions and mainstream consulting firms withdrew their previously agreed speaking engagements in response to pressure from their internal public relations officers. This reluctance, it seems, reflects concerns about the image associated with this technology. (Note: A certain chairman of a certain securities commission declined his third invitation in three years to speak at Consensus.)

What bothers me about this is that if one side of the debate is absent, they defer to the extremists on the other side. Not showing up is the best way for those who want a more regulated industry to let the “crypto bros” dominate the conversation. A more intensified echo chamber is hardly what we need. Now is the time for people to come together and address their differences, to advance the global conversation around this technology. This is not the time to hide under a rock.

The good news is that, thanks to the commitment of regulators and businesses in non-US jurisdictions, Consensus 2023 will definitely not feel like an echo chamber. In a series of sessions, we will highlight regulatory approaches and industry developments in Japan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the UK, Bermuda, the Bahamas, South Korea, Switzerland and other countries, as well as from the International Monetary Fund. The outside world is getting involved with crypto, even as the US government shows its hand. (As an aside, while we’re happy to welcome Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rep. Patrick McHenry back to the stage, it would have been nice to balance them out with the Democrats.)

At this pivotal moment, when regulation can drive innovation around one of the most important technologies of the century, either into the shadows or against the people, companies and governments that can exploit it and develop systemic change, it is important that people are free to have their say. mind. We need open, reasoned debate, not shrill fear mongering or demonisation. That’s what we plan to do in Austin. I hope to see you there.