Five Crypto Event Trends in 2025

GM and Happy New Year!

In this issue, we'll brief you in on where we see events headed in 2025.

1. Event Fatigue is Real, but the Number of Total Events is Only Going to Increase

We’ve been witnessing a significant uptick in events driven by the bull market and the industry's expanding footprint:

• 🇸🇬 TOKEN2049 2024 saw a 176% increase in side events, totaling 746 side events compared to only 270 in 2023.

• 🇹🇭 Devcon Bangkok had 525% increase, with over 800 side events compared to 128 during Devcon Bogota in 2022.

• 🇧🇪 ETHCC Brussels had 549 side events, reflecting a 170% increase from the 203 side events held in Paris the year prior.​

While the number of events may seem overwhelming, we believe it merely reflects the unprecedented growth of our industry.

2. Argentina will Take Over Lisbon

Argentina has emerged as a new crypto hub, driven by President Milei's strong push for a crypto-friendly agenda and other big 2024 milestones:

• The third Avalanche Summit was hosted in Buenos Aires

• ​Forma, a Solana Network State, established its first Solana Economic Zone in BA

• The city becoming a favored destination for crypto nomads

• Rumors of Devconnect 2025, an Ethereum Foundation event, taking place in Buenos Aires

• ​Crecimiento, a movement to transform Argentina into the world's first crypto nation, hosted its first pop up city in 2024, with plans to host 2 more in 2025​

It’s too early to tell, but from the crypto narrative standpoint, Buenos Aires looks primed to surpass Lisbon.

​3. More Ecosystem-Focused Events

Event standards are rising. The focus is shifting to global, ecosystem-driven initiatives, led collaboratively by both the HQ and their communities to achieve scale. For example:​

• Berachain hosted sixteen side events during Devcon, only 3 of which were Foundation hosted.

• The Solana Foundation is transitioning to global community-run events and moving away from hacker houses

• Base spearheaded global Base Meetups with the help of local ambassadors, alongside larger company-hosted events.​

We're particularly excited to see how Kraken and Uniswap will approach their in-person go-to-market strategies in 2025 in light of their recent L2 announcements.

4. New York City is Back

Despite SEC hurdles, NYC is poised for a crypto resurgence. Key highlights:

• The return of Donald Trump as president boosting crypto-friendly policies.

• The city maintaining its lead as one with the highest number of crypto companies in the US (and arguably the world), according to an a16z report.

• NFT NYC coming back and scheduled in the same week as Permissionless, which relocated from Salt Lake City to Brooklyn for June 2025. Combined, we're expecting over 1000 side events in one week alone.

​Notably missing is Mainnet Messari, which is unlikely to return in its traditional conference format. Messari is reportedly exploring alternative, smaller-scale event setups.
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As always, you can use our site to find all NYC dates here.

​5. More Pop-Up Cities & Crypto Retreats

Outside of conference related events, organizers are leaning into longer and more creative formats:

• Many Zuzalu supported projects took place in 2024, and we expect the trend to continue

• Community-run Solana retreats were in abundance: Founder's Villa in Dubai, mtnDAO in Salt Lake City, IslandDAO in Koh Samui to name just a few, with many promising to return in 2025.

• ​Edge City is planning six locations globally

• Pudgy Penguins is going to Antarctica

• Venture capital firms organizing exclusive crypto trips, like Lattice's skiing trip, Unruly Capital's Dolomites retreat, or Coinbase Ventures Summit in Malibu

​Takeaway:

• Event competition has never been more intense. To stand out, plan thoroughly and early - our ETHDenver side events list has over 40 side events already and we are still 2 months away.

Builder highlights

What our members have been up to

• Welcome to our newest member Piertasty, co-founder of letsgethai and the current dev lead at Reflexer Finance.

• ​Jonk.eth joined Frankencoin, Switzerland's largest (and only decentralized) stablecoin project, as Managing Director.

• ​B1rdmania and the Sonic Labs team launched Sonic Mainnet, a powerful EVM compatible L1 platform.

Who are we?

• We’re building cryptonomads.org - The place to discover crypto events, companies, jobs & professionals.

• We also run a private club - a community of web3 founders and builders who meet at events worldwide.

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Wishing you a prosperous 2025!

*This post was originally sent on January 5th, 2025 and published here