As I strolled through the exhibitor hall in Toronto at Consensus 2025, one of the most important crypto and blockchain conferences of the year, admiring the glittering and glamorous displays, I did my best to take stock of an industry with an uncertain future, one where long-term use-cases remain to be seen simply because there hasn’t been much of a long term to speak of quite yet.
With crypto momentum only picking up steam coming out of the Global Financial Crisis, I marveled at how nearly 15,000 people from 102 countries would visit the Metro Toronto Convention Centre as Consensus attendees, keen on furthering due diligence, closing deals or simply learning about how decentralized technology is bringing efficiency to spaces reliant on legacy intermediary institutions to make a market. Think banking, supply chain management, real estate and product/identity authentication, to name just a few.
