Singapore rolled out the red carpet for the crypto industry and F1 racing enthusiasts last week, with the country’s first Token2049 event and related Asia Crypto Week coinciding with the return of the F1 Grand Prix in the stunning island state. This resulted in over 7000 attendees and 2000 crypto firms joining the fun at Token2049, ready to network and promote what they’ve been working on, with many staying for the racing competition over the weekend.
CoolBitX, the maker of CoolWallet, once again co-sponsored Token2049, Asia’s biggest and most influential crypto event, which officially ran from 26 September to 2 October, if Asia Crypto Week’s events are included.
As with its last edition in 2019 in Hong Kong (the previous two years were canceled due to the pandemic), our founder and CEO Michael Ou once again attended in person and was joined by Frances Chang, our APAC Manager. Both took the time to connect with CoolWallet supporters, owners, and curious attendees at the busy CoolWallet booth, and also had several meetings with some real crypto heavy hitters. deal-makers, founders, and teams from leading projects behind the closed doors of the Meeting Rooms section.
While over 150 side events jostled for attention over the course of Asia Crypto Week, the real action took place at Token2049’s jam-packed main 2-day conference on 28 and 29 October at the lavish Marina Bay Sands Convention and Expo Center’s floors 3 to 5.
Web3, NFTs, Parties… and F1 Racing
Token2049 as usual featured an array of the biggest crypto visionaries, OGs, new upstarts, and influential anons, covering every single corner of the Cryptoverse, especially Web3, NFTs, security, and regulations. Speakers included Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Dan Morehead from Pantera Capital, Mike Novogratz from Galaxy Digital, FTX COO Constance Wang, Alexandre Dreyfus (Socios and Chiliz), Tron’s Justin Sun and Dr. Ben Goertzel from SingularityNet, who brought Hanson Robotics’ incredible AI-powered android Sophia with him to the conference.
As the sun went down over beautiful Sentosa Bay, the activities continued across the city, and event organizers spared no expense to entertain the crypto faithful.
These included parties at CÉ LA VI Singapore (MetaMask Institutional event Thursday night and the official AfterToken2049 party on Friday), the exclusive rooftop bar perched on top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel right next to its iconic infinity pool, Cardano’s Pool Party at the Sentosa Outpost Hotel, and a host of NFT project nights at various prestige venues such as the Fullerton Hotel.
Other NFT highlights were Pudgy Penguins’ Asia Huddle meetup and Froyoverse’s Arcade Night, with Azuki’s NFT Asia party taking over standout nightclub Zouk.
The parties continued long after Token2049 concluded on Thursday, with the attention shifting to last Sunday’s F1 Grand Prix that took center stage in the city center. This meant that several exchanges such as OKEX (McClaren), Bybit (Red Bull Racing and Crypto.com took the opportunity to amplify their sponsorships with Formula One’s teams and organization to full effect.
Of course, as this is 2022, Web3, DeFi and NFTs are on everyone’s mind and lips, and Token2049 was no different, with the best and brightest in the sector running booths and sharing their knowledge in insightful panels and keynote talks across a wide variety of topics. The Web3/NFT gaming vertical also continues to gain a lot of attention, as VC-backed gaming studios try to figure out how to get their tokenomics right and keep players engaged enough to keep playing. With no sign of interest waning in this disruptive new crypto sector, it’s surely only a matter of time before more companies follow in Axie Infinity’s 2021 footsteps and pull in the masses to GameFi with the right products.
CoolWallet Pro Booth
As a leading Web3 hardware wallet, CoolWallet garnered a lot of attention, thanks in no small part to our eye-catching booth which displayed the slogan “Own Your Key to Web3”. Many attendees were so excited to see our amazing hardware wallet IRL that they cashed in on our 20% event-only discount promotion to order their CoolWallet on the spot!
As you can see from the pictures, it was a healthy mix of work and play, with the aim to really connect with other attendees and boost the brand awareness of CoolWallet. Let’s be honest, online conferences, like Zoom calls, are as much fun as new Covid variants in 2022, and nothing beats meeting up in person again with your favorite cryptocurrency people to talk shop on all things crypto.
Token2049 will now move to London in November 2022, but it’s safe to say that it will be more subdued, with less than half of Singapore’s numbers expected. In any case, most of us will already start to plan our trip back to Singapore in 2023!
