Author: Dov

Went to Miami to attend the Consensus conference, and there were hardly any Chinese people. Here is the current situation in the western Crypto world:

Where is the consensus?

Zcash is the new consensus in the United States, with Naval + a16z + Multicoin all betting on it. As for why, I will create a separate post/video to discuss, it's unlikely to end in the short term.

Public Chains

• Monad / MegaETH: Being compared to the dual champions of Sui / Aptos from years past, there is plenty of money involved, each has its pros and cons.
• Canton: Lots of money, but very hard to blend in—because it’s not really a Crypto circle, it’s full of Wall Street people.
• Upbit L2: Recently discussed a lot, but overall expectations are rather mediocre.
• Tempo: Not much activity in the crypto circle, Paradigm is already playing a higher-dimensional game.
• Solana: Looking for direction, but it seems it hasn't found a particularly suitable one yet.

Perp DEX

• Hyperliquid: Activities are still very vibrant, but you rarely see HYPE people. There are considerable disagreements on the price of HYPE in the U.S. now; I will write a separate piece to discuss.
• Perp DEX is blooming everywhere: Now everyone has one—every exchange, every stablecoin, every chain, every MM wants to launch a Perp DEX.

Established CEX

• Coinbase: Has lots of money on hand but does not want to play Degen games, nor need to; they do not care about that amount of money.
• Kraken: Very good at this, keeps up very quickly; Nado will definitely work.
• OKX / Bybit / Bitget: All are working hard to develop a compliant market in the U.S. The CEO of Bitget even brought bodyguards to speak—this is a symbol of status in American culture.

New Variant Exchanges (Trading Terminal / Frontend Trading)

• Various Trading Terminal and AI Trading variants are emerging: Genius, Vergex, TPlus, Liquid, etc.
• The U.S. Perp is about to comply, which is actually a big opportunity. Can you imagine? Previously, Americans couldn't leverage to trade coins, nor could they short.

DAT

• Strategy is heavily engaging in ecological projects, BTC is still in the early stages of leveraging. For example: @saturn_credit.

RWA

• The most important trend in the next 1–2 years. Recently, a large number of RWA assets have emerged, led by various stock Perps and Startup Perps.

VC

• Asian VC: Completely dead. Yzi is still actively investing (but Yzi cannot be considered an Asian VC); Demo Day was very well done, and there are still quite a few projects. Some very good projects can be seen, such as @renaissxyz.
• Western Crypto VC: Facing a lot of fundraising pressure. a16z did something big because they are a16z.
• Other Western VCs: Each has its own way of failing—some fail in completely not playing the altcoin game of this cycle, others fail by randomly investing in secondary markets and DAT.

MM (Market Makers)

• Active MM games have also spread to the West, but Founders face the risk of imprisonment, plus trust issues, so progress is generally normal.
• Many compliant passive MMs are turning their attention to prediction markets.