Conference Season Vibe Check Consensus HK - Lots of attendance from legacy builders, funds and instos, esp across DeFi and RWAs. - Instos and funds are less cooked on average than the West. Lots of groups like IDG, Hongshan, Gaorang etc still sitting on good amounts of cash - HKSE and Hong Kong private startups are actually doing quite well - many are raising at 2x vals of the average YC grad nowadays. - Tons of blood in the water. Multiple dead liquid funds. Multiple projects quiet quitting / checking out. - LOTS of supply of RWAs. No demand though. - BTC fud at ATHs. Lots of OG folks losing faith esp after BTCs lack of presence in the debasement trade, and more credible folks questioning crypto as a whole than I've seen in a long time. - No one's in a rush to bid. - Rumours that we were gonna "rug" after Consensus. Perhaps one of the most retarded ones I've heard so far, as we wrap up multiple acquisitions and double down on internal products. Why tf would I drag my ass for 20 hours around the world to these performative conferences in order to rug smh. Asia loves to talk smack as usual. ETH Denver - Relative ghost town attendance wise - largest side events had a couple hundred people optimistically - That said, lots of OG builders and friends were around. Way less of the people trying to sell you stupid audit services or KOL marketing or similar nonsense. - Higher signal due to less noise. The people in attendance wanted to be there or cared enough to show up, esp with lots of flight delays and wind. - Similar interest in RWAs and Agentic Finance, though I've seen very few things that look like they'll actually move the needle yet personally. Saying "RWA looping" 5x doesn't actually make it work. - Friends at chains/infra projects are all facing similar problems -> why tf should someone bid my token - Tons of M&A in progress between teams shutting down and well capitalized players getting more aggressive. - Many small VCs (25-50M) sitting on capital without any clue on what to invest in, with AI one-shotting portcos on a weekly basis. - Retail cooked beyond all belief. tl;dr - HK / APAC as a whole is cooked but not as cooked as the west - Many ded funds, projects and quiet quitters - RWAs and Agentic Finance catching narrative bids - Private rounds are anemic af but there is some cash on the sidelines, everyone scared of getting oneshotted by AI - Retail super ded - All that people are looking at is cashflow / rev generation for tokens
