TLDR Tech / Crypto
What Happened to Conferences?
Mega crypto conferences are losing attendee quality through a self-reinforcing cycle: high-signal founders and investors migrate to curated side events and invite-only dinners, main-event composition degrades, and others follow. Crypto talent centralizing around New York and a handful of other cities has also reduced the geographic necessity that conferences originally addressed for an industry with no home city. The decline mirrors crypto's outward turn into the broader economy: stablecoins have penetrated traditional finance faster than forecast, Hyperliquid is shipping oil futures, and TradFi conferences now run stablecoin and prediction-market tracks. The probable endpoint is fewer mega conferences on the current every-eight-weeks treadmill, with the "crypto conference" label fading the way "internet conference" did once every conference became one.
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