Consensus 2023 offered a subdued but thoughtful vibe

Good morning from Austin, home to the annual crypto industry confab known as Consensus. The tacos here proved to be as good as promised, and the ubiquitous music and outdoor bars make it a lively place to walk around. The vibe at the conference was more subdued than during bull market years, but that’s not a bad thing as it meant fewer bottom-feeding grifters walking about—the joke is they’ve all moved on to the A.I. scene instead.

Meanwhile, the relative calm meant I had time to catch up with some of the crypto industry’s smartest people. These included Sergey Nazarov, who founded Chainlink, the popular “oracle” on which many projects—DeFi ones in particular—rely in order to draw data that serves as the foundation of many smart contracts. Chainlink last year announced a tie-up with the global money messaging system SWIFT, and Nazarov told me to be on the lookout for news of the service partnering with other big financial players in the coming months. This is yet more evidence that the worlds of blockchain and mainstream finance are drawing closer together.

I also spoke with Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, who was Coinbase’s first employee and is one of the kindest, most interesting people in crypto. He views himself as an entrepreneur in “fringe” technologies and is dabbling with some out-there stuff such as using magnets to activate different parts of the brain for different occasions—part of a quest to have Silicon Valley invent tools that not only extend our lives, but make us happier, too. Carlson-Wee is still very much immersed in crypto. One of the earliest advocates for altcoins, he is now of the view that the industry is awash in too many layer-1 blockchains and that it’s time to consolidate around Ethereum. That’s a view I share.

Onstage, I interviewed Polygon’s head of business development, Brian Trunzo, who has signed deals to supply NFT services to the likes of Nike and Starbucks. He predicts those brands are just the beginning, and that marquee names from industries like fashion, beauty, and music will embrace NFTs—though they won’t use that name, and will instead come up with their own in the same way that Starbucks is giving out “Stamps.” Most strikingly, Trunzo said the monetary value of most NFTs will drift to zero as the killer use case instead becomes as a tool to power loyalty and rewards programs.

Consensus also proved an occasion for the event’s host, CoinDesk, to take a well-deserved victory lap to mark its 10-year anniversary. Even as the publication remains on the block—the latest rumor I heard is that media outlets like Bloomberg and Dow Jones have passed but that hedge funds remain in the mix as potential buyers—the folks at CoinDesk continue to do excellent journalism and put on well-oiled events. Let’s hope they land on their feet.

Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts

DECENTRALIZED NEWS

Solana is up 125% this year, even outperforming Bitcoin, and that suggests the blockchain can overcome its onetime association with Sam Bankman-Fried. (Bloomberg)

Coinbase filed a response to the Securities and Exchange Commmission’s Wells Notice, flatly declaring the firm “does not list securities.” (Reuters)

Robinhood announced a new plug-in feature called Robinhood Connect that will let third-party wallets plug into its crypto brokerage. (Fortune)

A U.S. judge ordered a South African exec to pay $3.4 billion—the highest ever CFTC penalty—for scamming thousands in a Bitcoin multi-level marketing scheme. (Bloomberg)

An Ohio man who stole 712 Bitcoins by lifting tokens from his brother’s laptop after it had been seized by the U.S. government will go to prison for four years. (Insider)