Second Day Token2049 > Second day is practically a confirmation of the first day - less builders, more institutions > Exchanges, custody solutions, payments, stablecoins infra, neobanks dominate the main conference booths at Token2049 > Investors are bearish crypto, many of the analysts i know during my Spartan days are either quitting crypto or have already quit > Their reasoning is that the exciting opps are largely gone - DeFi has matured and winners have already emerged, NFTs/Memes are gone (even though Stonks & the recent RHC wave were pretty nice) > Most things are priced in which leaves ONLY a small number of narratives and teams primed for future upside (i.e. AI, privacy, RWA, payments) > The only analysts left are either net neutral or net short, hoarding up cash and has only 1 or 2 positions that he/she believe in > Some are still quite bullish though, got a friend who told me that there's a clear split in the high-networth market rn. Whales from the East are bearish while whales from the West are bullish (thanks to the recent push this year) I used to enjoy coming to major conference like Token2049 to take in the excitement and the energy of builders working on cool stuff. My first Token2049 was in 2023 and it was the best conference experience for me. Almost every side event I attended was filled with builders talking about DeFi primitives, L1/L2s architecture, rollups, tokenomics - literally all the geeky stuff that if I were to talk to people about today at side events, 80% of the people wouldn't care about because they're an employee working at an institution. Welp, sorry for the rant. I'm excited for the Third Day of Token2049 though because gm AI v2 (the event we're hosting) will be the place where I try to bring some of that 2023 energy back. Lots of AI builders, lots of geeky conversations, lots of fun. See you guys around!