If you regret skipping this Token2049 in Singapore - don’t.

The whole thing is dead.

First, logistics. I still don’t understand why anyone decided to run this conference during Formula 1. It’s literally impossible to get around. You can’t catch a taxi, and even in small Singapore it takes an hour walking from one venue to another. A couple of events a day easily turn into $100-150 on taxis alone.

And then you finally arrive and the event is half-empty. Or the crowd is just confusing - mostly market makers, marketers, random service providers.

But where are the early-stage projects that actually need tokenomics, growth, marketing? Almost none. A few VCs and family offices here and there. I keep asking people: "What’s your goal here?" and nobody has a clear answer.

Maybe the answer is inside the actual conference itself - we usually only go to side-events - and maybe this year institutions are there.

Or perhaps it’s just a mirror of the market right now: no liquidity, no volume, no retail. Marketing, for example, feels impossible to sell because no one believes in it anymore. Everyone still expects crazy results from tiny budgets.

Another sad part is that people don’t really connect like before. For me, this was my first Token in Singapore (though I’ve been to many other conferences), but I didn’t feel the scale, the traction, the E-NER-GY everyone was talking about.

Even those crazy parties, which already became the stuff of folklore, don’t seem to happen anymore. Yesterday, that famous Mandarin penthouse was shut down by 12 AM.

Yes, F1 drives prices through the roof ($1K+ for a hotel night), and maybe everyone is just at the race. But in crypto itself, it feels like there are fewer and fewer real builders left.

Sadly, even some of my colleagues who are in the space for 5-8 years are talking about shutting down projects or leaving altogether.

That’s just how it feels on the ground right now. And this is deeply sad.

Author

Ai Base Network (ABN), ABN ASIA was founded by people with deep roots in academia, with work experience in the US, Holland, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. ABN Asia is where academia and technology meet opportunity. With our cutting-edge solutions and competent software development services, we're helping businesses level up and take on the global scene. Our commitment: Faster. Better. More reliable. In most cases: Cheaper as well.

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