The World Economic Forum (WEF) has put the Swiss town of Davos in the spotlight recently. For the last three years, cryptocurrency companies have used the main strip in Davos as a platform to showcase their goods. But by 2024, AI has already dominated. Several major companies are advertising AI-related goods and services; one of these companies even went so far as to say, “The future is AI.” This action reflects the dramatic increase in focus and the expenditure on artificial intelligence (AI) that happened last year, propelled by the soaring rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
Companies from all over the world are competing for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI), and they’re likely expecting that the big announcements they make at the Davos Promenade will demonstrate their expertise in the field.
The assets that companies like Salesforce and Intel—a US-based semiconductor manufacturer—acquired have AI keywords splattered all over them. After that, there was the “AI House,” a venue provided by companies like Swisscom, a telecommunications operator in Switzerland.
Despite an ongoing trend from past years, artificial intelligence firms outnumbered cryptocurrency ones at the Promenade. Companies continued to promote “Bitcoin Pizza Day” and “non-fungible tokens” at the World Economic Forum in 2022 even though cryptocurrency prices had dropped by that point. In January 2023, when the crypto cold started, firms cut back on their spending at Davos. However, the industry was still well-represented, with an unusual orange Bitcoin car among them.
As a whole, AI makes perfect sense. Machine learning and artificial intelligence startups received a significant increase in funding during the third quarter, according to the Emerging Tech Indicator, which is based on data collected from the world’s fifteen most successful venture capital firms and provided by PitchBook. During the same period, this buzzy tech raised approximately 600 million, whereas Web3 and decentralized finance enterprises raised just over $100 million. Shares of Nvidia, a firm sometimes depicted as the public face of AI, have increased by 239% in 2023.
It would appear that the cryptocurrency industry is content with the change at Davos. The chief strategy officer of Circle is Dante Disparte, who often goes to Davos. Circle made the widely used USDC stablecoin, which is tied to the US dollar. As Disparte puts it, the blockchain and crypto business has had to “tell the story of the technology, as opposed to the story of results.”
These days, you won’t see many crypto houses lining the Promenade. The fact that they’re all AI houses is great, Disparte said. “That suggests that this is becoming a background technology.”
Disparte, who has collaborated with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to enact stablecoin legislation, claims that the remaining businesses and actors will integrate with more conventional financial institutions and payment systems.
“It’s not dissimilar to the way the internet had to go through its dotcom bubble phase to hand over the development of the Internet to more durable, trusting and safe hands,” according to him.
He continued by claiming that a new technical player’s entrance would allow him to play the part of a classic player. It means that he is spared the burden of explaining the technology, which is also a plus.
This is not to say that cryptocurrency companies do not exist. On the Promenade, you could see many examples of Circle. Another Swiss non-profit with an event space is the Global Blockchain Business Council. The blockchain company CasperLabs, which has been a regular at the event for a while, also had a sizable booth. Although investors and the cryptocurrency sector appeared to enjoy a better year in 2023 compared to 2022, it was still a relatively quiet year. More than 150% of the value was added to Bitcoin in 2023.
It is widely believed in the sector that crypto companies are no longer obliged to demonstrate their worth. Numerous individuals consider last week’s Bitcoin ETF clearance by the SEC as a turning point that solidified cryptocurrency’s status as a legitimate asset class.
