The most Crypto crowd is becoming the least Crypto

Original Author: Web3 Xiaolv

My strongest impression from this April's Hong Kong Blockchain Week wasn't any particular panel, but a single scene.

Around 10 PM, in a cha chaan teng in Wan Chai, four or five people were squeezed around a table, devouring plates of beef chow fun while discussing what they'd be working on next. A friend who previously worked on stablecoin payments mentioned his team had fully pivoted to AI. Another guy focused on on-chain data said half his time was now spent building data pipelines for AI companies.

No one talked about token prices. No one discussed narratives. The word "Web3" barely came up.

I wasn't surprised. It felt oddly familiar — three years ago, the same people sitting at the same table would have been all-in on DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain gaming. They were the same people, with the same excitement, the same total commitment.

After attending the Hong Kong Carnival and then Money 20/20 in Bangkok, one thought kept echoing in my mind: The most crypto-native people are becoming the least crypto-centric.

After the Web3 tide receded, what’s actually left? After these two events, I think I have my own answer.

1. Hong Kong: Familiar Faces, Unfamiliar Topics

First, Hong Kong. This year's carnival saw noticeably fewer crypto project teams. The previous years' hustle of handing out T-shirts and spinning narratives everywhere had faded.

This year's official theme was literally "Mountains, Wind, Clouds, Sea" — a clear signal: moving away from the trading narrative. Three years ago, that would have been met with boos. This year, no one batted an eye. Everyone had already stopped talking about tokens anyway; it was an unspoken consensus.

Walking the expo floor, the faces were familiar: OKX Wallet, TRON, ZA Bank, HashKey, Sinohope. But their topics had changed, overwhelmingly converging on two words: RWA and AI.

RWA continued its momentum from last year, but frankly, everyone knows who's genuinely building and who's putting on a show. One judgment that feels right: For Hong Kong, RWA is essentially the productization of wealth management and investment — moving real-world assets onto the chain for greater efficiency and easier cross-border distribution. This plays exactly to Hong Kong's strengths: institutional design and financial productization. With the froth gone, Hong Kong seems more comfortable — the restless energy that never quite suited it has finally dissipated.

AI was even more interesting. Almost every panel discussed the convergence of AI and Web3. I listened to several, and honestly, most discussions stayed at the level of "these two things should combine." As for *how* to combine them and *what problems* they solve, no one could clearly articulate it.

My feeling is that Web3 is latching onto AI not because it has a clear vision, but because without it, there's simply no story left to tell. And those panelists probably know they're just latching on. But surviving comes first — that's always been the survival philosophy of this space.

There was surprisingly little news on the HKD stablecoin front. Licenses were issued, but asking around, the two major banks each have their own pace and weren't in a hurry to make a splash. Turns out, nobody seems to care much anyway.

What truly struck me, though, were the people *off* the stage. The busiest people weren't the speakers, but those casually dressed in exhibitor badges, hustling through the networking areas — business developers, community managers, content creators, project matchmakers. They might not have impressive resumes or speak "professionally," but their understanding of the industry was forged meal by meal, rejection by rejection. This isn't knowledge gained from reading reports; it's earned with time.

Whether an industry can survive a cycle depends not just on headline-grabbing star companies at the top, but on how many people are willing to keep grinding below the radar, without applause.

Web3's foundation is still there. But what's running on top of it has completely changed.

2. Bangkok: The Stablecoin Trojan Horse

Flying from Hong Kong to Bangkok felt like entering a different world.

Money 20/20 is a pure fintech B2B exhibition. Entry isn't cheap, and attendees dress like they're going to client meetings. Panel sessions often had empty seats, but the networking areas were packed from open to close.

What surprised me was that stablecoin and crypto-native companies accounted for roughly a third of the exhibitors: OSL, Circle, Ripple, Fireblocks, Cobo, Pyth… at least a dozen, many exhibiting for the first time. Money 20/20 even launched a dedicated zone called "Intersection," specifically for the TradFi-DeFi convergence. Stablecoins are no longer a fringe topic at fintech events; they're a core part of the agenda.

But here's the kicker — none of this crypto third were selling crypto at their booths.

They were all selling payment rails, settlement channels, and asset custody. Some exhibitors explicitly defined themselves as "Web 2.5 finance" — one foot in crypto-native, one foot in traditional payments. People doing business there didn't care what underlying chain ran. They wanted three things: fast settlement, low cost, and regulatory compliance.

I spent two afternoons in the networking area. Every ten minutes or so, I heard "stablecoin" from a nearby table. No one talked about prices. The conversations were all about building pipelines, onboarding merchants, and choosing compliance vendors. These were people with actual business to execute.

During one panel, the moderator directly challenged a speaker: "Brazil's Pix already offers instant, free transfers. Why do we need stablecoins?" The speaker's answer was blunt: "Pix solves domestic problems. Cross-border is still a pain point." This is probably the most honest positioning for stablecoin payments: not replacing local payment systems, but filling the cross-border gap that traditional finance has never solved well.

Thanks to Finternet for the invitation; I had an interview with Sumsub that left a lasting impression. This KYC/KYB company's earliest clients were all Web3 projects — exchanges, wallets, DeFi protocols. But now, their biggest source of new clients comes from Web2: payment institutions, banks, and companies expanding overseas. Ironically, the massive Web3 client base became their credibility, allowing them to smoothly break into traditional finance. Web3 was their training ground; Web2 is the real market.

See, this is the footnote to my earlier point: The most crypto-native people are becoming the least crypto-centric. Stablecoins aren't just "entering" traditional finance anymore; they've thoroughly integrated — so much so that at a conference like this, you can't tell which company is a stablecoin firm and which is a fintech. Even if traditional financial institutions don't run stablecoin businesses themselves, their clients will force them to integrate.

Stablecoins didn't storm the front gate of the traditional finance castle. They entered through the back door, and by the time the castle's inhabitants noticed, the pathways were already laid.

3. AI Label Inflation

The pathways are laid, but new labels are being plastered all over them.

At the Bangkok expo, I noticed roughly eight out of ten booths I passed had "AI" or "Agentic" printed on them — Agentic Payment, Agentic Wallets, Agentic Banking.

I stopped to ask a few companies specifically: "What's your most mature use case for the AI module?" The answers were vague, mostly pointing to future Agent-to-Agent (A2A) scenarios. As for actual transaction volumes, there was a tacit agreement not to provide numbers.

One company, formerly in stablecoin payments, made a choice many consider but few act on. When the infrastructure layer is already crowded, building another channel means fighting among a sea of similar channels. Instead of waiting for the tide, they pivoted to tackling payment pain points for the booming AI industry. Not labeling themselves as "crypto for AI," but serving AI's actual needs. Compared to the vague A2A concepts floating around the expo, this is a much clearer strategy: don't wait for Agents to learn how to pay; solve the payment problems AI companies have *today*.

But looking back at the AI frenzy at the expo, it strongly resembles Web3 in 2021: infrastructure first, killer app unknown. There's one difference though: in 2021, demand was artificially created to find users. Today's "Agentic Payment" has at least one real premise — AI agents *are* growing exponentially, and they will eventually need to pay and get paid autonomously. The question isn't whether demand exists, but when it arrives and in what form.

During this window of "when it arrives," slapping on the label first is the safest bet.

What if it does arrive?

4. The Pathways Are Laid, What Next?

Viewing Hong Kong and Bangkok together reveals a clear divergence.

Hong Kong is about financial productization — RWAs, wealth management, asset management — competing on product design and distribution channels, layered with crypto operational thinking. Bangkok is about payment rails — stablecoin cross-border settlements — competing on compliance licenses and local channels. Put together, these two paths represent what truly remains of blockchain after the Web3 tide receded: financial infrastructure.

Not the yield bonanza of DeFi Summer. Not the mass FOMO of NFTs. Just pipelines, licenses, and partnerships, one by one.

Boring, but real.

Web3 once promised to "decentralize everything." What survived the downturn are patches and extensions of the centralized financial system. The Cypherpunk revolution didn't happen. But the pipes are embedded within the castle walls — and that in itself might be more enduring than any revolution.

The pathways are laid, but three key questions remain unanswered:

• Is it too late for stablecoin infrastructure? There are already too many infrastructure companies building at events like Bangkok. Room for differentiation is shrinking fast. New entrants don't need to build *more* pathways; they need to figure out *what should flow through them*. Whoever can embed stablecoins into high-frequency, essential use cases will be the winner of the next phase. Not the builders of the pipes, but the users of the pipes.
• Application-level solutions are the direction. The infrastructure layer is thick enough. Value is migrating towards the application layer. Companies laying broadband in the 2000s made the first wave of money, but the truly big businesses were Taobao and WeChat running on top of it. Stablecoins are approaching that inflection point.
• What about Agentic Payment? I've been tracking this space for a while. Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are all positioning themselves. The x402 protocol is advancing. But the gap from protocol to mainstream adoption isn't technology; it's a trust framework and a sufficiently large cross-border transaction scenario. Without those, it stays demos and panels.

But then again, when someone first talked about stablecoin cross-border payments in 2021, they probably got the same reception: "The concept makes sense, but real-world application is far off." Five years later, stablecoins are embedded in the capillaries of traditional finance. Agentic Payment might be at a similar stage. Only this time, the window will be much shorter.

5. In Conclusion

On the flight back, the scene that kept replaying in my mind wasn't any panel — it was that table in the cha chaan teng.

One person pivoted to AI. Another is building data pipelines for AI companies. The rest are still figuring out how to onboard more merchants for stablecoin payments. Three years ago, they were talking about a different world. But one thing hasn't changed: they're still in the game, still working, still throwing themselves into the pool.

The most unique thing about the Web3 space isn't its technical frontier. It's that it naturally attracts a certain type of person — someone who jumps in regardless of the temperature. The tracks change, the narratives shift, but this raw sense of participation doesn't disappear. It just puts on a different outfit.

The tide receded. The revolution didn't happen. But the most crypto-native people, carrying their playbooks, speed, and survival instincts, are infiltrating bigger battlefields: traditional finance, AI, cross-border payments. They've stopped shouting slogans. But they're more dangerous than ever.

Because this time, they put on a suit.

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