No consensus at the consensus conference, the foot of the Meme mountain is packed with people
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
No consensus at the consensus conference, the foot of the Meme mountain is packed with people
Making money is the best consensus mechanism.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
People's joys and sorrows do not resonate with one another.
Beyond refusing to take over from each other, there’s also mutual disregard for market trends.
For example, today everyone is only focused on NOT's meteoric rise and RoarKitty's comeback driving GME-related memes skyward, forgetting that today also marks the annual Consensus conference—one of the industry’s most important events.
Since 2015, the Consensus conference hosted by CoinDesk has become one of the most significant annual gatherings in the global blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Back then, it was once a barometer for technological innovation and a bellwether for investment and regulatory trends.
Each year, the event typically brings together global crypto elites to discuss and shape the future direction of technology and markets.
And every year around this time, there are usually reports covering new viewpoints or topics emerging from the conference.
Only this year, the so-called “Consensus” seems to have lost all consensus.
From Bustling Crowds to No Consensus at All
Organizing conferences, to some extent, is an explicit reflection of an industry's boom and bust cycles.
In 2018, during the ICO frenzy, the Consensus conference was packed—everyone wanted to sniff out their own opportunity from the air of token launches. Then, during bear market cycles, the conference became relatively dull and quiet, with people seriously discussing "building."
This year, regardless of whether the market is bullish or bearish, one easily observable phenomenon is that almost no one is talking about the conference anymore.
Scroll through various media outlets bombarding you with breaking news every minute—you won’t even find a single mention of the Consensus conference. Clearly, the information delivery mechanism itself has already filtered out what it deems “unimportant.”
Yes, market movements matter more.
The once lofty forum for high-level discussions on industry directions and technology has gradually led to a shared understanding: “the conference doesn’t impact the market much.”
You hold your meeting; I’ll keep trading.
This growing divide between industry dialogue and market participant behavior, the decoupling of authority from attention, makes the entire crypto market resemble nothing more than a full-blown meme playground.
According to attendees’ on-site impressions, keynote speeches drew sparse crowds—a far cry from the packed halls of New York’s Consensus summit five years ago.
If the conference itself lacks momentum while meme coins are skyrocketing across the board, then this bull run looks more like localized capital volatility and player-versus-player (PVP) action—no real expansion of the industry pie, no surge in retail participation, Google Trends interest remaining low and stable...
In such a structural bull market, can decline be locked away within information silos?
If individual attendees’ perceptions might be subjectively biased, perhaps statements from speakers on stage carry more weight.
Casey, founder of the Ordinals protocol, bluntly declared at Consensus 2024 that 99.99% of projects attending were complete crap.
This inevitably recalls a classic meme re-shared in crypto circles: “Don’t get me wrong—I’m saying every single one of you here is trash.”
Clearly, the speakers know why people are really here—and what caliber of participants they’re dealing with.
Yet the fact that even this supposed trend-setting Consensus conference is becoming diluted only further highlights how form now clearly outweighs substance in the industry.
Meme Mania: Crowds Overflowing Beneath the Hype Mountains
In stark contrast to the ignored Consensus conference is the rampant speculation surrounding memes.
NOT surges ahead, yet NOT itself isn't a classical “value coin”—in many ways, it still falls squarely into the meme category. Latest data shows NOT’s 24-hour trading volume exceeded $4.6 billion across all platforms, ranking only behind BTC and ETH.
Besides NOT, different memes have become mountains formed purely by waves of attention, each now swarming with crowds below.
Whether it’s political elections or celebrity token launches, these are merely pretexts to capture attention—new tokens often skyrocket overnight. Even older coins can reignite, doubling in hours due to just one tweet from RoarKitty announcing a comeback.
Everyone eagerly rushes to hop on different meme bandwagons, convinced they haven’t reached the peak yet.
In this climbing race, WangQiao points out another emerging consensus in meme speculation: when a celebrity buys a coin, it’s good news; when a celebrity launches a coin, it’s a red flag.
All consensus now revolves around attention games—who promoted what, what was promoted, and when to buy… None of it has anything to do with technology.
Profit Is the Best Consensus Mechanism
“Consensus,” in blockchain technical documentation, commonly refers to consensus protocols.
What is a consensus protocol?
Simply put, it’s a method enabling mutually distrustful parties with conflicting interests to reach agreement.
Now, this technical term has gained a more human interpretation:
Agreement may not come from technology—but from profit.
For today’s crypto market, making money is the best consensus protocol. Wherever profits lie, that’s where we should focus.
Building technology and doing real work is too exhausting and offers poor ROI. Focusing on what earns today—that’s become an unspoken but undeniable consensus among industry participants.
The original consensus around crypto assets was “Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver.” Later it shifted to “Bitcoin is gold, Ethereum is silver,” and now even Ethereum’s status as silver faces challenges and debate.
Beneath the gold standard, nothing is fixed—different sectors and hotspots are all competing for attention.
Reaching consensus often comes at a cost. May none of us end up paying it—and instead, may we all walk away with profits.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
