I Expected a Wild Cast of Characters at a Crypto Conference. Nope.

I wanted to go to the Solana Accelerate conference as soon as I saw the trailer for the crypto confab.

The video ad showed “America” at a therapist’s office, where the country described its urge to innovate and was met with resistance from a “woke” therapist, who encouraged America to “channel this energy into something more productive, like coming up with a new gender.”

The ad was so over the top in its culture war stance that the Solana organization pulled the video a few hours later.

I was curious: Would the tone of the conference, which was late last week, match the ad?

Not really. I was surprised by what I found.

I must report that crypto has entered its boring stage. It’s no longer the wacky, eccentric, overhyped goofball world of NFTs and hype of a few years ago. Attendees wore normal clothing (OK, there was one guy in a sequin blazer). The crowd was largely male, in their 30s, and had the look of people who had full-time office jobs in tech.

A colleague who was considering attending the conference with me lamented that it seemed a far cry from the NFT conventions of a few years ago — no good parties or big musical performances. There weren’t gimmicky cartoons or celebrity endorsements. These were serious people who were here to work.

With a caveat: The silly NFT and Constitution DAO days weren’t that long ago, and even though the crypto industry has matured in certain ways, it’s not that far off. At least one person I chatted with who had appeared as a speaker onstage to talk about stablecoins told me he used to work at OpenSea, the NFT trading platform, and still proudly owns a few NFTs.

The big topic most of the speakers hit on: stablecoins. Stablecoins are often meant to be tied 1:1 to a fiat currency, like the US dollar. In theory, these are, well, stable (sort of) and intended for use as digital currency rather than a pure number-go-up speculation play.

This is very much the hot thing of the moment. Last week, the GENIUS Act, which would create regulations for stablecoins, passed the House and is heading to the Senate.

Politics did cast a long shadow on the event. Two New York Democrats gave fireside chats: Rep. Ritchie Torres and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand talked about regulation, and both mentioned their distaste for President Donald Trump’s memecoin.

“Trump being involved in crypto is the worst news for this industry,” Gillibrand said, to scattered applause.

There was also political representation from the other side of the aisle. There was big applause for Bo Hines, who funded his failed 2022 campaign for the 13th congressional District in North Carolina with his own trust fund, and is now working under David Sachs as a sort of deputy crypto czar to Trump.

Anthony Scaramucci, a character whose political affiliation is somewhat quixotic, enthused about the speed of crypto transactions compared to his early days on Wall Street.

But it shouldn’t be a surprise that the politics here weren’t black-and-white. Crypto has a way of drawing mercurial ideas out of people that don’t fall straight down party lines. Which is why the ad for the event, which espoused the meat-and-potatoes anti-woke viewpoint, seemed so out of place.

So, is crypto … boring and mainstream now? It almost seemed that way without the over-the-top glitz and pomp of the diamond hands emoji Lamborghini-loving crowd. (The same morning, a little over a mile away from the event, two people were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and torturing a man to get his bitcoin password.)

The night before I attended, Trump held a dinner for top holders of his memecoin, where the crowd was reportedly somewhat disappointed by his brief speech and the mediocre food.

This has long been a dichotomy in the crypto world: the grounded engineers and business people working on projects with utility vs. the get-rich-quick schemers, crooks, and scammers. The attendees I chatted with were the former type — and they found real use and value in this conference.

But as a mere fly on the wall, I kind of wanted a little more of the latter group, just for the entertainment.