Attendees at World Economic Forum (WEF), Davos were inundated with signs advertising stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto brokerage Bitcoin Suisse as they got down from their trains in Davos.
“Five years ago, we were the only crypto company on Promenade. And look at it now,” said Sandra Ro, CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC).
Discussions around crypto
What underscored the fact that crypto players have arrived at the big table of economy is that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is holding serious discussions about digital money, with industry participants as key players.
Circle Pay’s chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire, and Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse sat next to each other on Monday at a panel, titled Remittances for Recovery: A New Era of Digital Money to discuss remittances and digital money at an issue briefing at the WEF media village, a report said.
The panel also included Asif Saleh, executive director of the BRAC, a developmental non-governmental organisation. The forum also hosted a discussion on the future of the global economy, the US economy and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) themselves.
Well, this doesn't mean that the forum’s global leaders accept cryptocurrencies, but they are not ignoring it.
Reaching the big table
A panel featuring PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, US Senator Pat Toomey, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman and economist Jason Furman did some discussion on crypto.
“For a lot of countries around the world, digital central bank currencies (CBDC) might make sense, I don’t think the United States needs to do them,” Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University, said.
There were several big crypto names with lounges and advertisements such as Polkadot, GBBC, Securrency and Casper Labs, among others.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency prices stay low with bitcoin still trading lower than $30,000.
At 1.15 pm (IST), bitcoin trades at $29,734, ethereum at $1,977, ripple at $0.407, solana at $49, binance at $1 and polkadot at $10, as per Coindesk data.
The crypto enthusiasts, draw parallels with the Internet in late 90s, and argue that there used to be ‘discussion’ around that time about the future of internet, and whether it was just a passing fad.
After a euphoric 2021, crypto investors have seen a combination of factors such as rising interest rates, inflation, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and a negative regulatory environment lead to a bear market.
The total value of the global crypto market dropped from $3 trillion in November 2021 to $1. 23 trillion as Bitcoin and other major alt coins were sold off.
