Token2049’s experiences: rising in the east and falling in the west, industry gossip and business experience in meeting

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TechFlow
09-16
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Author: Xiao Ming is a post-00s generation and the founder of TechFlow TechFlow

Token2049 Singapore is over. This may be the most informative essay.

How much money did the organizers make? What are some interesting gossips from this Singapore event? How do the big guys in the crypto view the market next year?

Let' Go!

rising in the east and falling in the west

"Everyone, everyone, everyone..."

Token2049 was packed with people, both at the main venue and at various Side Events. People couldn’t help but think WTF, “ Is this really a bear market now? ”

There are not only Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Southeast Asians, but also a large number of leading project developers, VCs and KOLs from Europe and the United States. Compared with Hong Kong activities, Singapore can truly be called "international" .

We randomly chatted with some overseas friends, and the summary is: U.S. regulators have suppressed cryptocurrency, policy risks have increased dramatically, and the Asia-Pacific market has become a new world of freedom. They are looking for money and users.

An episode: A friend’s crypto VC was named “10Cents Ventures”. Unexpectedly, a large number of overseas start-up project founders approached him for pitches, hoping to invest in them, because they understood “10Cents Ventures” as “Tencent Ventures”. investment)” .

A few months ago, it would have been ridiculing to say "rising in the east and falling in the west" in the industry, but the scene presented by Token2049 has made Singapore the global capital of cryptocurrency .

Although the top VCs and projects in the industry are still based in the United States, more and more projects are considering going abroad to explore the Asia-Pacific market.

Because Token 2049 was so popular, Permissionless II, which was held in the United States at the same time, was slightly embarrassed. Friends who attended the conference in the United States said that the number of attendees at Permissionless was not as good as before, and some sponsors were very dissatisfied .

There is unconfirmed news from a well-known project side that well-known conferences such as the Future Consensus Conference are also considering coming to Asia. In 2018, CoinDesk tried to hold the Consensus Consensus Conference Singapore station in Singapore.

Devcon 2024 will be held in Thailand or Vietnam. It is foreseeable that the world's most core blockchain conferences in the future will basically be concentrated in Asia .

How much money did the organizers make?

While attending the conference, I was impressed by how many people there were and wondered, “How much money did the organizer make?”

The main event had over 10,000 registered attendees and over 400 sponsors …

When visiting various booths, try to inquire about their sponsorship prices. They vary. Depending on the size and location of the booth, the prices range from US$10,000, US$30,000, US$50,000, US$70,000, or even higher. As for some core crown sponsors, The exposure of the name and the big poster is another astronomical figure.

After the event, I heard different answers from different channels. Some said that the organizers made US$30 million this time, while others said that they made about US$15 million this time. US$15 million is a more accurate answer and is enough. Envious.

The first Token2049 in 2018 had only about 1,000 attendees. Five years later, it has grown 10 times. Last year and this year, it was even more popular than the two established ones, the Consensus Conference in the United States and the Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit in China. Crypto Summit.

Behind this is certainly the individual efforts of the organizers, and perhaps more importantly, the historical process. The real turning point is in 2022, when Singapore becomes the Asia-Pacific Web3 center .

In 2023, all regulatory sticks in the United States will fall again, causing many Web3 projects to consider fleeing the United States. At this conference, more than 15% of registered participants were from the United States .

The ups and downs of Token2049 Sigapore are tied to the country of Singapore, becoming the beneficiary of Sino-US encryption regulation and geopolitics.

The success of Token2049 Sigapore is like the rise of many exchanges, waiting for competitors to make mistakes, seize the opportunity, and win.

Next year, Token2049 will be held in Dubai in addition to Singapore. Originally, the other venue for Token2049 besides Singapore was the United Kingdom. However, Token2049 London was too depressed in 2022, so it was canceled this year.

Dubai is another Web3 center, and Chinese people used to be exempted from visas. To make money from hosting conferences, they had to rely on Chinese people .

Awkward guests

What is the significance of participating in blockchain conferences in various countries throughout the year?

Some people do it for financing, some people do it for marketing/BD, some people do it to travel and post on Moments, some people do it to meet old friends... but it is estimated that not many people really do it to listen to the speech.

This leads to an embarrassing scene in all blockchain conferences: a large group of people are chatting and socializing outside the main venue, while a few people are inside "listening to the lecture and playing with their mobile phones". People outside get tired of chatting and go in to sit and take a rest. , the speeches of the guests on stage are just background sounds .

I attended an event before the opening of Token2049. The guests on the stage were extremely high-quality, and they were all founders of top projects in the industry. However, there was a bustling audience under the stage. The occupancy rate was only one-third, not to mention that most of the people were just Sitting, most people are outside chatting and socializing.

The moment I was there, I had a phobia of embarrassment, so I quickly sat in the front row and stared at the guests, pretending to listen carefully, even though I couldn't understand them completely. I just didn't want to embarrass him too much and tried to give the guests as much emotional value as possible.

Here I would like to give special praise to BlockBeats media company Blockbeats, which sent more than 10 reporters and editors to participate in Token2049, recorded the speeches of the guests on site, translated them into Chinese and released them for dissemination as soon as possible.

Although we know that all activities will eventually become social, we still hold the idea of ​​"making an event with content", jointly held QuestN and imToken to hold the Web3 growth event "GM Singapore", and specially invited the co-founder of Fosun Group Mr. Liang Xinjun, former Consensys CMO, and Ms. Amanda, the first market leader of Ethereum, came to share.

Originally it was only planned to be a small event for about 100 people, but more than 1,000 people registered backstage. Due to venue considerations, only less than half of the applications were approved. As a result, the crowd still had to be temporarily restricted in the middle of the event and no one was allowed to enter.

During the event, we still could not avoid a large number of participants socializing and chatting, and it was unnecessary to forcibly ban it. However, a considerable number of the audience listened to the entire 4 hours, 10 speeches, and 2 round tables. To express our respect to them, Respect!

Industry gossip

Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and where there are rivers and lakes, there is gossip.

For an industry where most people work remotely, offline conferences have naturally become the best opportunity to exchange industry gossip.

Compared with Shanghai or Hong Kong, where you can only exchange gossip about the Chinese community, gossip in Singapore is more international. From sky-high fines to underground romances and scandals of overseas big VC employees...

The gossip in the Chinese circle is relatively traditional. It is nothing more than xxx went in before and how much it cost to get out; how much money xxx's secondary fund lost; xxx had serious internal strife; two partners of a certain VC left collectively... ..

Base Friends in Singapore all said that after staying in Singapore for a long time, it was indeed a bit boring and there was very little local gossip.

Although there are many big names in the Singapore crypto circle, these big guys may have a "dream of returning home" deep in their hearts. They look forward to the day when they can return home in full glory, return to their hometown in fine clothes, return to Beijing, and return to the place where the dream began, to find recognition.

Compared with last year, Singapore's popularity has cooled down. An obvious indicator is that rents in Singapore have dropped .

One of the reasons may be that Singapore cracked down on the "Fujian Gang" money laundering case, and a large number of people left Singapore. Some local drivers in Singapore even found that their bosses and colleagues had disappeared overnight.

Bear market creates assets

"Bear markets create assets and sell them in bull markets " has almost become an industry consensus.

In a bear market, what kind of assets are everyone building?

Judging from my limited personal experience at the conference, the most common types of projects I saw were mainly payment projects that are conducive to fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, stablecoins, RWA, Gamefi, ZK... Especially RWA , which has become a favorite of startups. In addition, some new stablecoins are about to be launched, some from entrepreneurial teams and some from leading crypto financial platforms.

A project that attracted much attention at the venue was The Open Network (TON) . Benefiting from the popularity of Telegram Bot, everyone believed that conversion by a large number of users based on Telegram was a direction to promote "mass adoption".

The second observed phenomenon is that many teams that have issued crypto assets are operating and building new projects. The same teams start from scratch, rewrite the narrative, refinance, and reissue coins. Many teams invariably choose to work on ZK related projects . infrastructure .

Old narrative projects hit dead ends or bottlenecks and cannot break through. Changing narratives and seeking new ways out has become a common phenomenon.

In the Chinese crypto community, "coin issuance factory" does not seem to be a derogatory term. People are more willing to invest in serial entrepreneurs who have experience in asset issuance. If they succeed the first time, they are more likely to succeed the second and third time.

When will the bull market come?

Token2049 is very lively, but under the hustle and bustle there is still "anxiety" and "uneasiness": When will the bull market come? What will be the dominant narrative of the next bull market?

With the primary and secondary markets facing a collective bearish situation, many early-stage projects can no longer survive. Some large exchanges are considering financing at high valuations, and some established projects are considering selling them all...

On September 12, I hosted the "2023 Asia Digital Asset Institutional Investor Summit" roundtable forum hosted by Antalpha. Cobo co-founder Shenyu, ANTPOOL CEO, Bitmain Marketing Director, etc. all participated in the "2024 Halving Market" On related issues, all the guests expressed their cautious optimism and believed that this is the last halving event that will have a major impact on Bitcoin. Everyone has high expectations for next year’s market, especially in the crypto industry that relies on “consensus and expectations”. In the market, confidence is often more important than gold.

Shenyu boldly predicts that the price of Bitcoin will be between 40,000 and 60,000 US dollars next year . All predictions may be defeated, but we still hope that Shenyu's prediction will come true.

(PS: In the encryption industry, it is better to be able to give direct judgments without fear of being slapped in the face than to always say ambiguous words or say both pros and cons and become a "long-earning blogger")

At a time when ZK is everywhere and infrastructure is everywhere, we are looking forward to real killer applications. Only with new people and new money will there be a new bull market. Friend.tech and Telegram Bot are trends that deserve special attention. It is too difficult to grow Web3 from 0 to 1. Parasitizing and financializing the social relationship chain and user precipitation of Web2 is the direction and trend that I am personally optimistic about.

I look forward to having different surprises in Token2049 next year.

The above are all my thoughts after drinking half a glass of Singapore Sling. They are very subjective. Thank you for reading.

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Disclaimer: The content above is only the author's opinion which does not represent any position of Followin, and is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, investment advice from Followin.
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