Went To Crypto Conference
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
Saw a bro eat breadsticks like they were securities.
Also $SATAN was there.
It's satire, unless you were there…then it's a documentary.
There's a Crypto Bro at the buffet huffing food like it's his last meal.
Sky blue flat-brim five-panel baseball cap above an unkempt and untrimmed beard; it's tufted like a birds nest, looking no less than six days overdue from it's latest untrimming.
Crypto Broski is pacing from stations of halves of wax-paper-wrapped chicken sandwiches and obviously-pleasant Canadian lettuces to what can be best described as stomach-issue-colored squash soup, sometimes taking a paper plate's worth to a standing four top - but mostly he's impatient, frozen in front of a tray of breadsticks, hunched over, two-fisting carbs into his gullet.
But so what? Trading all these meme coins likely makes you hungry - and what are manners when you're mooning crypto bags, anyway...Bro?
It's Toronto, Consensus May 2025, another in a never-ending season of crypto conferences, mainly boondoggles shaped as crafty business to be done. As David Byrne croons it's really just,"the same as it ever was.”
Except, well, is it?
You see, the specter of deregulation hovers in the air: Tradfi (traditional finance) corporations are launching ETFs and RWAs and Index Funds at a brisk pace; Michael Saylor's Public Bitcoin huffernugger, Strategy (read: company with no strategy except to stockpile BTC) is offering At-the-Market Equity Programs and Preferred Stock Issuances while Cantor Fitzgerald and their greed-filled financial brethren are imitating with lovesick-girlfriend precision.
But no matter, it's a crypto conference and there are VIP dinners to attend. Dozens each night to be exact. It's all good because, nah, no one has to be an actual VIP to attend one. If you RSVP'd affirmatively, then you too can be a VIP, and you'll find there are 70 other regular everyday VIPs in attendance, all of whom are mostly just people who require the flattery of being called a VIP, so are attending a too-long-for-anyone's-taste dinner in a low ceiling'd restaurant that is too-loud-for-the-conversational set, but has quality dinner rolls to stash in the pockets of your too-old-to-be-wearing-that-hoodie crew.
It's May 2025, and everyone has an opinion on Satan. Sorry, no no, I meant $TRUMP. Right, not Trump Satan himself, just this particular form of Satan who materialized his namesake meme cryptocurrency in the greatest crypto grift of all time; so yuge, it's a scam that makes Madoff's ponzi look like a child's lemonade stand with no change for a ten-spot.
No matter, because wen crypto regulations get loosened, industry execs are forced to choose between their livelihood and any sense of human dignity they may have once had.
Crypto conferences are a lesson in distraction, as is evidenced by panels of mostly white men with the occasional Asian woman (no, really, don't kill the messenger, I'm just reporting the news here) bragging about their smartypants new crypto financial product that makes Satan's Trump's tariff math look logical, all while dozens of really really really white people mill about in front of them, loudly making small talk and scanning each other's telegram QR codes. The good news is the panel is being livestreamed so those who are having their own VIP dinner at home can actually hear the proselytizing while buying a meme coin named something porno-gross, only to get rugged by Don Jr. sometime later.
Most private executive coffee meetings start at least ten minutes late as everyone is real busy making sure they appear busy enough to be ten minutes late. Over a cup of Tim Horton's finest, it's clear everyone who runs a real company (ie: didn't print fake internet money out of thin air) is absolutely trying to be for sale, but thinks no one can smell their desperation, so instead use big boy words like SPAC and Equity Swap just to signal they're really f'ing tired of trying to run a real actual business - and maybe this is the day they'll be beaten down enough by VCs suggesting they just launch a token. I guess, well, Satan is making gobs of money, so why shouldn't you?
A running list of words overheard more than once (in no particular order):
Market Maker Black Box
Pumped n' Rugged
Scatalogical
Fraudalicious
Milked-like-a-barnyard-goat
Paperhands McFlimsy
Slip-n-slide
Shillumanati
It's-only-funny-until-someone-loses-a-cold-wallet.
And so while I’m soaking in everything that is, indeed, same as it ever was about crypto at this conference, I get an alarming text: one of our key client contacts has been fired. The news is confirmed the modern way—an abrupt exit from the group Telegram chat, like being Thanos-snapped from existence.
On backchannel, on the total down-low, shhh don't tell anyone, their coworker's appreciation for their time at their (clearly culturally healthy) org was obvious: “Dude spent a year torching money like it was a performance art piece. Built absolutely nothing, talked like he was keynoting Davos. lol”
Yeah, it's the 'lol' that really makes it all hang together because, well, because this is crypto and if you're not laughing with them, you're not printing enough deregulated securities commodities.
Then again, if you don't know who the sucker at the poker table is, you can sure as sh¡t bet it was you when you bought some $TRUMP coin.