Good morning from Austin, home to the annual crypto industry confab known as Consensus. The tacos here proved to be as good as promised, and the ubiquitous music and outdoor bars make it a lively place to walk around. The vibe at the conference was more subdued than during bull market years, but that’s not a bad thing as it meant fewer bottom-feeding grifters walking about—the joke is they’ve all moved on to the A.I. scene instead.
Meanwhile, the relative calm meant I had time to catch up with some of the crypto industry’s smartest people. These included Sergey Nazarov, who founded Chainlink, the popular “oracle” on which many projects—DeFi ones in particular—rely in order to draw data that serves as the foundation of many smart contracts. Chainlink last year announced a tie-up with the global money messaging system SWIFT, and Nazarov told me to be on the lookout for news of the service partnering with other big financial players in the coming months. This is yet more evidence that the worlds of blockchain and mainstream finance are drawing closer together.
