"Crypto" barely came up at some of the panels from the industry during last week's World Economic Forum (WEF) conference or during the side events in Davos, Switzerland. There were discussions about specific issues within the industry or about use cases for blockchain technology (and I was told the phrase "use cases" is getting phased out for "case studies"), but the actual word didn’t come up.
Instead, you had the industry talking about issues that could be adjacent to crypto, such as data storage and sharing, or sub-issues within crypto like stablecoins. And you saw public officials speaking to use cases for the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies.
CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey wrote about what he saw, and also noted that whatever the industry may want, it won’t be able to escape the “crypto” term right now.
And yet, that may not actually matter. While the industry did have a smaller presence, the panels that did happen were substantive. The official WEF had more panels related to crypto and crypto-adjacent topics this year than last. The speakers at the side events represented the United Nations, NASA, CERN, BlackRock, the U.S. Congress, the Ukraine Parliament and a host of other traditional heavyweights.
These speakers didn’t wander onto a stage hosted by a crypto company by accident. Their willingness to be affiliated with the industry, even as loosely as a speaker, is suggestive.
Of course, the industry is currently still barreling full tilt toward adding to its impressively large dumpster fire status, so we’ll have to wait and see what the long term looks like.
You can catch CoinDesk's coverage of the week below.
