Introducing CoinDesk’s First-Ever ‘Consensus @ Consensus’ Report

The cryptocurrency assemblage has a large communicative to tell, but it urgently needs to archer it.

At least, that is simply a recurrent taxable passim CoinDesk’s first-ever Consensus @ Consensus report, retired today. Based chiefly connected intimate radical discussions that took spot astatine Consensus 2023, it covers a wide scope of pressing issues challenging the integer assets industry. These see the recently urgent taxable of regulation, the competing demands of privateness and instrumentality enforcement, the trouble of bringing self-custody to the mainstream, the aboriginal of crypto media, and more. The treatment groups, which convened mostly offstage successful Austin, Texas, from April 26-28, 2023, represented a cross-section of funny parties – including developers, investors, authorities officials, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits.

Amid that assortment of topics and diverseness of perspectives, the 1 wide through-line, the refrain that I kept speechmaking implicit and implicit arsenic I edited the 11 chapters, was that this planetary question has to retrieve wherefore it exists successful the archetypal spot – and intelligibly explicate that intent to the wider world.

This nonfiction is excerpted from CoinDesk’s inaugural Consensus @ Consensus Report, the merchandise of intimate, curated radical discussions that took spot astatine Consensus 2023. Click here to download the afloat report.

Following the crypto clang of 2022, governments and the wide nationalist are apt to presumption this exertion arsenic a get-rich-quick scheme, a hive of hucksters and fraudsters. This cognition is understandable, successful portion due to the fact that specified unsavory characters ever flock to crypto during bull markets, and particularly due to the fact that the past boom-bust rhythm drew successful organization and mainstream retail concern arsenic ne'er before, causing much wide harm erstwhile the bubble inevitably burst.

As I’m fond of saying, the casual perceiver could beryllium forgiven for missing the quality of a equine erstwhile determination are truthful galore flies buzzing astir its behind.

Despite a comparatively upbeat temper among the 15,000 attendees from 97 countries who attended Consensus 2023, the specter of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed FTX exchange loomed ample implicit the event. Bankman-Fried explicitly said helium was successful the concern to marque a accelerated luck (albeit due to the fact that helium supposedly wanted to donate his winnings to bully causes). Thanks successful nary tiny portion to his deceptions, on with likewise reckless behaviour by little salient figures during the febrile play from 2021-2022, beingness savings person been lost, politicians are retired for blood, and the U.S. securities and banking regulators person gone from lukewarm to hostile successful their stance toward the industry.

Overshadowed by each this play are the developers, creators and entrepreneurs who inactive judge successful crypto’s foundational ideals of openness, transparency (for the powerful), privateness (for the weak) and decentralization. They instrumentality astir aft the terms charts crook reddish and physique for the agelong term. Whatever the aboriginal holds, it belongs to them.

However, the statement astatine Consensus, arsenic it were, is that they request to get the connection retired astir however their projects payment (or volition benefit) mundane users, successful bid to mitigate the inevitable, ongoing tightening of the regulatory screws.

“I deliberation what the manufacture could payment from is affirmative efforts astatine affirmative narratives,” is simply a typical punctuation from a subordinate successful 1 of the backstage roundtable discussions….