WEF’s Annual Summit in Davos: Crypto Industry in Crisis?

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual summit commenced on January 16 in the snowy Davos, Switzerland, intending to discuss various topics among which crypto and crypto regulations are a major part.

Notably, the crypto conference has been enriched with different groups including the Global Blockchain Business Consortium, Casper Labs, Circle, Filecoin Foundation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), United Nations representatives, and lawmakers from different countries.

However, unlike last year’s summit, the groups gathered were less interested and more skeptical about crypto. The long-lasted crypto winter and the fall of FTX and other crypto exchanges had a severe impact on the crypto industry as a whole.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of USDC stablecoin issuer Circle commented about the “lot of nonsense” in crypto:

I hope there’s an increased focus on utility value and practical applications of the technology, and less focus on retail investors chasing meme coins.

In addition, the necessity of crypto regulation was addressed during the meet-up. The investors and traders who gathered for the conference called attention to the urgency of “action.”

Nigel Green, the CEO of the leading financial advisory organization, deVere Group said that only crypto regulation could bring easiness to the volatility in the crypto market:

First, as more and more institutional investors – including pension funds, mutual funds, investment banks, commercial trusts and hedge funds – as well as individual investors, increase their exposure to crypto, and as mass adoption increasingly takes hold, inevitably cryptocurrencies will play an ever-greater role in the international financial system.

Significantly, the crypto world has drastically changed since last May, with the continuous fall of crypto prices and the downfall of once-significant crypto companies. While in May last year, Davos was flooded with crypto executives; this year, there was a grave fall in the number of attendees, which is evidence of the crumbling condition of the crypto industry.