Consensus 2021 — Day Two

Three takeaways from day two of the biggest crypto conference in the U.S.

In my experience, the second day of a conference is usually the biggest, most star-packed session but I’m not sure that applies to an online conference. I’m doubly not sure in this case because I’m very not sure that I really understand the crypto world. There: I said it. I’m trying to figure things out and most definitely do not hold myself out as a crypto expert. That being said, here are three takeaways from the second day of Consensus from Coindesk.

1. The Story: Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy became a poster child for corporate adoption of cryptocurrency over the past year as he turned the balance sheet of his company into a bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle. His basic investment thesis was that governments were running the monetary printing presses and thereby debasing currencies and his timing was impeccable as his purchased BTC skyrocketed in value. The name of his panel, “The Herd Has Come: 2021’s Bull Run from the Front Lines” took on new meaning from when it was originally written earlier this Spring as BTC has fallen ~45% from it’s highs in March. Instead of a story told from the front lines it may be more one of how the bull has run away from the front lines. In any case, Saylor, who appeared on the panel with the dignified and solid Michael Sonnenshein of Grayscale Investments, is still all-in on BTC, even going as far to engineer a meeting between Elon Musk and bitcoin miners to counter climate concerns around the cryptocurrency just yesterday. After a few too many decades in and around markets, I am left wondering if Saylor has fallen too much in love with his position and is no longer looking at things objectively. We shall see.
2. The Serious: I very quickly get out my depth in crypto conversations so please take anything I say in this section with a grain of salt. I understand from experience how markets work and I’ve been around enough successes and failures to generally have a decent sense of distinguishing between what might work and what is an obvious stinker. Put another way, I can usually tell when something is bullshit but I am not always as good at picking winners. That being said, the one-on-one “Onwards and Upwards? Why Gavin Wood Abandoned the Virtual Machine” rang the bell for me. Wood was a co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), a history that is well documented in Matt Leising’s excellent “Out of the Ether”, and his latest effort with Polkadot have the makings of being the type of next generation technology that is needed to move on from the limitations of BTC and ETH. This is one to watch.
3. The Silly: I am generally avoiding the topic of NFTs both because I fail to understand both the furor around them and the very real ways in which they might be useful. That being said, I noted with a chuckle that the “Long the Metaverse VR” session was curated by someone named BoomboxHead. My giggling carried over to the “Human Oracles - The DeFi Investors with 20/20 Foresight” panel when I saw that one of the panelists was names Mona El-Isa. Well, the joke was on me because that’s not a fake name mimicking “Mona Lisa”. Mona El-Isa is a bad ass. Oops.

That’s it for day two of Consensus. See you back here tomorrow.

Chuck Mackie is a principal at Fathom Communication. Fathom provides thought leadership strategy and content that delivers both depth and understanding for financial services and technology innovators.