21 October 2024, New York City — The fourth annual Messari Mainnet conference proved to be a vibrant convergence of crypto, DeFi, TradFi, policy, and AI — uniting thought leaders and innovators at the forefront of the U.S. crypto landscape.
Kicking off day one, Eric Turner, CEO of Messari, the leading crypto market intelligence provider announced the launch of Messari Copilot, an advanced AI assistant built exclusively for the crypto industry. Following this were top-of-mind conversations around the U.S. elections and what it means for crypto policy.
Sam Brown, Bernie Moreno, and Mike Rogers, all Candidates for the U.S. Senate, sat down with Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith to discuss what these policies should look like: “We have an opportunity to lead, but we cannot lead without predictability around regulation and the laws and that’s been one of my core concerns,” said Moreno.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer in his fireside chat with Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith explained the SEC needs a three-pronged perspective when making decisions for the way the industry is regulated.
“Gary Gensler has done something that not many people in government do — he's united both democrats and republicans on this issue…. Bills, when it comes to digital assets, have to be written from the perspective of the entrepreneur, from the perspective of the investor, from the perspective of the inventor. We need to let people create this, not the government trying to tell you. The Market Structure Bill was fixed from the beginning — it had way too much authority going to the SEC,” said Emmer.
Part of the reason regulatory bodies in the U.S. have taken such an interest in the crypto space is increased institutional investment in crypto. Robert Mitchnik, Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock sat down with Vicky Huang of The Wall Street Journal to discuss how traditional finance firms are adapting to the reality of crypto as the future of finance.
“Tokenization has massive potential. I think some of the hype associated with it ran out in the early days — excluding the reality of what it could be in the short or even medium term. There's a lot of infrastructure attrition, there are some regulatory questions, and there are some coalescence by industry players around asset classes that still needs to happen to really see this start to unfold at scale,” said Robert Mitchnik, Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock.
“It was not until DeFi summer that we realized we were thinking about it the wrong way — we were lifting our TradFi principles onto the blockchain but we realized blockchains were actually most suitable to building new things…People are done experimenting with blockchains — now they want to know how it will add value to their business,” Christine Moy of Apollo told Eric Turner.
The Mainnet 2024 conference came at a pivotal time for the U.S. Web3 industry, highlighting a critical turning point for crypto, policymakers, and institutions to work closely together to shape a future that is beneficial for all.
The thinking is unanimous: the era of experimentation is giving way to the need for practical applications that drive real-world impact. Videos of all the talks can be found at messari.io/mainnet/videos.
About Messari
Messari is a leading provider of market intelligence products that help professionals navigate the world of crypto and digital assets. Founded in 2018, Messari’s mission is to promote transparency and smarter decision-making in the industry.