Alright — this was a really interesting two days.

What I experienced wasn’t just a crypto conference.

It was crypto growing up. And AI quietly trying to insert itself into that evolution.

Let me zoom out and synthesize this properly, with emphasis on the AI thread running through both days.

Consensus, originally anchored in Austin, landing in Hong Kong for its second edition here is symbolically important. Hong Kong wants to be a crypto-finance bridge. And this conference felt like that bridge under construction.

But the overall discussion, and dare I say it - vibe?

Not degen. Not euphoric. Not meme-heavy. Way more banker-ish.

And that tonal shift matters. Because Bitcoin is hovering around $67–69K after a weekend dip, and it’s more than enough to drain some swagger from the room.

You could feel it.

Crypto wasn’t in its carnival phase. It was in its institutional adolescence.

On the first day, AI showed up in spectacle form first.

Humanoid robots boxing on stage. Two speakers in robes controlling them. Entertaining. Slightly absurd. A visual metaphor for the industry: impressive demos, unclear utility.

But once you stripped away the theatrics, AI surfaced in a more serious context:

The dominant AI narrative at the conference:

The thesis:

This is what some are calling agentic commerce.

On paper, it’s elegant: AI agents negotiating contracts, paying for APIs, buying compute, and executing transactions. All autonomously.

In reality?

It still feels like tech looking for a compelling problem.

Blockchain has long been described as a solution searching for use cases. Now AI is being fused into that narrative, hoping to create urgency and need.

But urgency and need doesn’t come from architecture.

It comes from distribution. Which leads to the next dominant theme.

Stablecoins dominated major stages.

Not meme coins, which was so last year. Not speculative tokens.

Stablecoins. Especially non-USD stablecoins.

With Hong Kong preparing its own regulatory framework and players like Standard Chartered and Animoca in the mix, there’s clear regional ambition.

But the smartest comment you heard cut through the noise, like a hot knife through all the crypto fat:

This is the distribution problem.

Technology is so easy to spin up. Liquidity and usage are not.

There was talk of an “Asian Tigers” style intra-regional stablecoin network — tying Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia together.

Strategically interesting. But commercially? Still super speculative.

And notably — no one was seriously discussing risk modeling around real-world assets being tokenized.

That absence is telling.

Old finance understands risk. Crypto still often romanticizes yield and doing it “for the culture”.

One of the clearest signals from Day 1:

Meme coins were basically gone.

Last year it dominant. This year it’s almost irrelevant. I literally heard crickets.

Instead:

Even Anthony Scaramucci predicting $100K Bitcoin by year-end felt… routine. Almost as if he had to do it.

Less euphoria. More asset allocation discussion.

And thus, crypto is becoming boring. And that might be actually be healthy.

Day 2 sharpened the AI conversation.