Why do we go to “crypto conferences”?

As an industry we’ve isolated ourselves from the rest of tech. We have our own celebrities, our own conferences, even our own culture. Being a “crypto dev” and being a developer carry wildly different stereotypes.

If crypto really were close to fulfilling its promises, this would disappear except at the academic/research level. No one goes to “internet meetups” anymore.

There are plenty of niche meetups/conferences

CES is a consumer tech conference, same idea as crypto conference

Could argue they are both subsets of internet conferences or at least tech conferences

I like baking /goodbread and building apps on web3 protocols. DevRel @ ENS Labs. gregskril.com

CES is extremely broad, but I’ll admit there are better counter examples.

Conferences may have not been the right feature to call out. The original one I thought of putting was the “I work in crypto” response people typically give when asked what they do. Very few people would say “I work in relational databases” even though that might be exactly what they do and yes there are conferences for it.

Scale also matters here. Niche topics are exactly that, niche. 10 or even 5 years ago it made sense, but it doesn’t if this is supposed to be the new internet