Caffeine for the Australian Digital Asset industry

What happens when you create a conference that has:

• No slides
• No presentations
• No keynotes
• No published speakers
• No published agenda
• No assigned ‘Q&A time’?

In the case of the Digital Asset Conference in Sydney last week, you get an incredibly well curated, open space for meaningful discourse and sharing of ideas.

The unusual format was by design; intended to open up the most important conversations that usually happen in the corridors and alcoves outside the main conference room, away from the stage. Instead Steve Vallas and Richelle Cox from Blockchain APAC expertly brought those conversations into the room and made them the focus of the day, where the contributions from the audience were just as important as the contributions from the experts on stage.

I often cringe when it’s conference Q&A time. Because usually you get very few good questions, even fewer actual answers, and a lot of “look how clever I am” statements that are rarely on topic. But every Q, every A and even the dreaded “I don’t really have a question but I’m going to take the mic anyway” statements were on topic and added value to the conversation.

Of course, it helped that the audience was a handpicked who’s who of the Digital Asset industry in Australia and beyond (shoutout to international guests from the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong!). Little old me suffered from serious case of imposter syndrome! But soothing my imposter syndrome was one of the key takeaways, that as accomplished as (almost!) everyone in the room was, the Digital Asset space is still in its infancy, still figuring itself out, and there is still so much to learn.

The opportunity is vast

What we can do in the Digital Asset world is significantly more than can be achieved in the TradFi world. This industry has the opportunity to break barriers, and there are some big murky problems that this technology can genuinely solve. But there’s still a long way to go, and really we’re just at the beginning.

I sure had fun creating this image in Adobe Firefly. Text prompt: white men in suits, looking constipated with pain on their faces, a large cup of coffee is being poured on them with sparkles and rainbows coming out of the coffee cup

Institutional constipation

Shane Verner from Fireblocks talked about the “institutional constipation” 😳 facing the industry in the past year, and indeed Steve Vallas even said the main driving force behind running this conference right now is because progress in Australia’s Digital Asset industry has slipped recently. There’s less money, lots of barriers in the way, an image problem, and an absence of a sense of urgency.

Call to action

The main takeaway of the day for me was that to capitalise on the opportunity on offer, now is the time to get building, have the right (difficult) conversations, create use cases, and face issues head-on as we build products.

There was a call to action for the industry in Australia to stop waiting for utopian, all-encompassing answers to come from somewhere else. Australia can add a lot of value to this industry, but we have to get a move on, to look less to government, regulators, or other jurisdictions for answers, and more to ourselves, pull our socks up and get on with it.

Hopefully events like this will inject the best kind of motivation and inspiration to get building and get solving problems together.