The most Crypto group of people is becoming the least Crypto

This April at Hong Kong Blockchain Week, what impressed me the most wasn't any panel, but a scene.

Around ten o'clock at night, in a Cha Chaan Teng in Wan Chai, four or five people were squeezed around a table, eating dry-fried beef ho fun while discussing what they were going to do next. A friend who previously worked on stablecoin payments said their team had fully shifted to AI; another person working on on-chain data mentioned he was now spending half his energy helping AI companies build data pipelines.

No one talked about coin prices, no one discussed narratives, and even the term Web3 hardly came up.

My feeling at the time wasn't surprise, but a strange sense of familiarity—these people had sat at the same table three years ago, discussing DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain games. They were still the same people, just as excited, just as fully engaged.

After visiting the Hong Kong Carnival and Bangkok Money 20/20, a phrase kept spinning in my mind: the most crypto people are becoming the least crypto.

After the retreat of Web3, what is left? After these two stops, I think I have my own answer.

1. Hong Kong: Familiar Faces, Strange Topics

Let's start with Hong Kong. This time at the carnival, there were noticeably fewer crypto projects; the lively atmosphere of handing out T-shirts and storytelling from the previous two years had dissipated.

This year's official theme was "Mountain, Wind, Cloud, Sea," with a clear positioning—saying goodbye to the narrative of speculating on coins. If this statement had been made three years ago, there would have been boos from the audience. But this year, no one felt it was out of place because everyone was no longer discussing coins, and instead reached a kind of tacit understanding.

Walking around the exhibition, the faces were familiar: OKX Wallet, TRON, ZA Bank, HashKey, New Fire. But the topics they discussed had changed, highly focused on two terms: RWA and AI.

RWA continued last year's momentum, but to be honest, everyone knows who is genuinely working on projects and who is just putting on a show. One judgment I think is valid: RWA in Hong Kong is essentially the productization of wealth management and investment—moving real assets onto the chain for more efficient and easier cross-border distribution. This is precisely what Hong Kong excels at: institutional design and financial productization. With the bubble gone, Hong Kong feels more comfortable—those disturbances that never belonged to it in the first place have finally dissipated.

AI is even more interesting. Almost every panel discussed the combination of AI and Web3, but after attending several sessions, I must say that most discussions remained at the level of "these two things should be combined." As for how to combine them and what problems to solve, no one could explain clearly.

My feeling is that Web3 is approaching AI not because they have figured it out, but because if they don't, there really won't be any stories left to tell. Moreover, those guests on stage probably know they are just trying to connect the dots. But the survival philosophy of this circle is to survive first and talk later.

There was actually no new news about Hong Kong dollar stablecoins. Licenses have been issued, but after asking around, the two major banks each have their own pace and are not in a hurry to make a big deal out of it, resulting in the realization that it seems nobody cares.

But what truly touched me were the people in the audience. The busiest people at the conference weren't the guests, but those casually dressed individuals with exhibitor badges, bustling back and forth in the negotiation area—those doing business development, managing communities, creating content, and connecting resources for projects. They may not have impressive resumes, and their conversations may not be "professional," but their understanding of the industry has grown from countless meals and repeated setbacks. This understanding isn't gained from reports; it's earned through time.

Whether an industry can survive a cycle cannot be judged solely by how many star companies are at the top; it also depends on how many people are willing to keep grinding when there is no applause.

The foundation of Web3 is still there. But what runs on that foundation has completely changed.

2. Bangkok: The Trojan Horse of Stablecoins

Flying from Hong Kong to Bangkok, the atmosphere shifted.

Money 20/20 is a purely fintech B2B exhibition, with a hefty entrance fee, and attendees dressed as if they were going to meet clients. The panel area often had empty seats, but the adjacent business negotiation area was full from opening to closing.

What surprised me was that stablecoin and crypto-native companies made up about one-third of the exhibitors. OSL, Circle, Ripple, Fireblocks, Cobo, Pyth, Metacomp... at least a dozen, many of which were exhibiting for the first time. This year, Money 20/20 even added a special area called Intersection, positioned as the convergence of TradFi and DeFi—stablecoins are no longer on the fringes of fintech exhibitions; they are part of the main agenda.

But interestingly—none of these one-third crypto companies were selling crypto at their booths.

They were all selling payment pathways, settlement channels, and asset custody. Some exhibitors even defined themselves as "Web 2.5 finance"—one foot in crypto-native and one foot in traditional payments. Those coming to discuss business didn't care what underlying chain was running; they wanted three things: fast settlement, low costs, and compliance.

I spent two afternoons in the negotiation area, and at the table next to me, I could hear the word stablecoin every ten minutes. No one discussed coin prices; the conversations were all about how to build pathways, how to onboard merchants, and which compliance solutions to use. The attendees were all people looking to land business.

At one panel, the host directly challenged the guests on stage: Brazil's Pix already offers instant free transfers; what are you still doing with stablecoins? The response on stage was straightforward—Pix solves domestic issues, but there’s still no solution for cross-border payments. This is probably the most honest positioning of stablecoin payments: they do not replace local payment systems but fill the gap in cross-border transactions that traditional finance has always struggled with.

Thanks to Finternet's invitation, I did an interview with Sumsub, and I was particularly impressed afterward. This company, which does KYC/KYB, initially had all Web3 projects as clients—exchanges, wallets, DeFi protocols. But now their biggest growth clients come from Web2: payment institutions, banks, and companies going overseas. The vast background of Web3 clients has become a credential that allows them to smoothly enter the traditional financial market. Web3 gave them practice, and Web2 is the real market.

You see, this is the footnote to the phrase I mentioned: the most crypto people are becoming the least crypto.

Stablecoins are no longer "entering" traditional finance; they have fully integrated into it—so much so that at the exhibition, it was hard to distinguish which company was a stablecoin company and which was a fintech. Even if those traditional financial institutions themselves do not engage in stablecoin business, their clients will push them to integrate.

Stablecoins did not storm the castle of traditional finance through the front door. They slipped in through the back door, and by the time the people inside the castle noticed, the pathway had already been laid.

3. AI Label Inflation

The pathway has been laid, but new labels have been stuck on it.

At the Bangkok exhibition, I counted, and about eight out of ten booths I passed had AI or Agentic printed on them—Agentic Payment, Agentic Wallets, Agentic Banking.

I asked a few companies about their most mature AI module use cases. The answers were vague, mostly pointing to future scenarios of A2A (Agent-to-Agent). As for real transaction volumes, everyone tacitly avoided giving numbers.

One company that had engaged in stablecoin payments in previous years made a choice that many people had in mind but had not yet acted on. When the infrastructure layer is already crowded, building pathways means squeezing in with a bunch of similar pathways. Rather than waiting for the water to come, they chose to pivot to the hot industry of AI payment solutions. It’s not about slapping a label on AI; it’s about providing services for AI. Compared to the vague A2A concepts at the exhibition, this is a much clearer approach: don’t wait for agents to pay for themselves; first solve the payment pain points that AI companies have today.

But returning to the AI craze at the exhibition, this scene indeed resembles Web3 in 2021—the infrastructure comes first, and the killer applications are still unknown. However, one difference is that in 2021, demand was fabricated out of thin air to find users; today’s agentic payment at least has a real premise—AI agents are indeed growing exponentially, and they will eventually need to pay and receive payments themselves. The question is not whether demand exists, but when it will arrive and in what form.

During the window period of "when will it arrive," slapping on labels is the safest choice.

What if it arrives?

4. After the Pathway is Laid, What Next?

Looking at Hong Kong and Bangkok together, a clear differentiation emerges.

Hong Kong is focused on financial productization—RWA, wealth management, asset management, competing on product design and distribution channels, layered with the operational mindset of the crypto circle.

Bangkok is focused on payment pathways—stablecoin cross-border settlements, competing on compliance licenses and local channels.

Combining the two paths reveals what blockchain has truly left behind after the retreat of Web3—financial infrastructure.

It’s not the yield frenzy of DeFi Summer, nor the FOMO of NFTs. It’s pathways, licenses, and partnerships.

Boring, but real.

The promise of Web3 was "decentralization will reconstruct everything." After the retreat, what survives are the patches and extensions of the centralized financial system. The revolution of crypto punks did not happen. But the pipelines have been laid inside the walls—this fact itself may be more enduring than a revolution.

The pathways have been laid, but three questions remain unresolved:

• Is there still time for stablecoin infrastructure?

  There are already too many companies doing infrastructure at the Bangkok exhibition, and the space for differentiation is rapidly narrowing. New entrants do not need to build more pathways; they need to find out what should flow through those pathways—whoever can embed stablecoins into high-frequency essential scenarios will be the winner in the next phase. It’s not the ones building the pathways, but the ones using them.

• Application solutions are the direction.

  The infrastructure layer is thick enough, and value is beginning to migrate to the application layer. Companies that laid broadband in the 2000s made the first wave of money, but the real big business came later from platforms like Taobao and WeChat. Stablecoins are approaching that inflection point.

• What about Agentic Payment?

  I have been tracking this field for a while. Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are all making moves, and the x402 protocol is also being advanced. But the gap from protocol to implementation is not technical; it’s about the trust framework and a sufficiently large cross-border transaction scenario; otherwise, it can only remain at the demo and panel level.

  But to be fair, when stablecoin cross-border payments were first discussed in 2021, they probably received the same treatment—"the concept makes sense, but it’s still early for implementation." Five years later, stablecoins have integrated into the capillaries of traditional finance. Agentic payment may be at the same stage. However, this round of opportunity will be much shorter.

5. In Conclusion

On the return flight, what kept replaying in my mind wasn't the content of those panels, but that table in the Cha Chaan Teng.

One has shifted to AI, one is helping AI companies build data pipelines, and the remaining few are still discussing how to integrate stablecoin payments into more merchants. Three years ago, they were discussing another world, but one thing hasn’t changed—they are still present, still working, and still throwing themselves into the pool.

The most unique aspect of the Web3 circle is not how cutting-edge the technology is, but how it naturally attracts such people—no matter how cold the water is, they jump in first. The track may change, the narratives may shift, but this wild sense of participation will not disappear. It has merely changed its attire.

After the retreat, the revolution did not happen. But the most crypto people, with their strategies, speed, and survival instincts, are penetrating into larger battlefields like traditional finance, AI, and cross-border payments. They no longer shout slogans, but they are more dangerous than before.

Because this time, they are wearing suits.