Crypto's value proposition: Perspectives from Consensus 2025

The Market Online

15-05-2025

If you've yet to dive into the world of cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain technology, you've probably heard about it, and may find yourself wondering if it will all turn out to be a fad or prove to have long-term viability.
While blockchains were only proposed in a paper by cryptographer David Chaum in 1982, with their industrial application only coming into full force with the creation of Bitcoin during the Global Financial Crisis, their utility is readily recognizable. It saves more time, money and effort to record transactions automatically, leveraging a decentralized network, compared to hiring an institution to sit in the middle of buyer and seller. This concept can be applied to literally any industry, streamlining operational costs, optimizing systems and ultimately improving the consumer experience and investors' prospects for a satisfactory return.
The use-cases for cryptocurrencies, which are used to settle transactions on blockchain networks, are considerably less certain. Firstly, they are far from universally recognized as valid currencies and/or investment vehicles, with restrictions in terms of legality and/or banking in place in many countries across the world. Secondly, while many tokens have posted phenomenal returns over the past 5 to 10 years, a great number have tanked, combining into a volatile track record too short to hang much conviction on or escape the category of speculative asset.
That said, many investors have room in their portfolios for asymmetric risk-reward opportunities, making cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies popular ways to aim for the upside of extreme volatility. These investments, like any other, rely on a thesis delineating their success, but stand alone in terms of the strong conviction required to hold on through the turmoil any nascent asset must endure to earn differentiated returns.
I attended the first day of Consensus 2025, one of the top global cryptocurrency and blockchain conferences, with eyes on measuring this conviction from the floor, hopefully offering interested investors a sense of what entrepreneurs believe about the industry's ability to create long-term value.
Ndax
My fancy first took me to a presentation called Beyond the Game: the New Era of Sports Partnerships, Crypto and Culture, where Bilal Hammoud, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ndax, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Canada, spoke about the company's mission to educate and become more approachable to those who may find crypto overwhelming, as most recently highlighted by a partnership with the NHL.
'As one of the top trading platforms in Canada, we want people to learn about crypto by understanding and less so by speculation,' Hammoud stated. 'Given that the NHL shares our main pillars of trust, community, education and authenticity, the partnership was a no-brainer.'
From left to right: Randy Osei, CEO of Athlete Technology Group; Brayden Jackson, a basketball player for St. Bonaventure University; Max Paulsen, Vice President of Global Business Development for the NHL; Bilal Hammoud, CEO of Ndax; Adrian Wojnarowski, General Manager of St. Bonaventure Basketball.
'Crypto has been through numerous cycles and it can be intimidating to this day,' Hammoud added. 'We figured that, if people were able to see our brand beside their favorite teams on the ice, it would create a sense of approachability and build a bridge for them to see that crypto is the future of finance.'
Ndax is playing an active role in spearheading this future, having executed over C$18 billion in transactions since 2018 and earned an enviable Appstore rating of 4.8, in addition to recently launching Ndax Ice, an official NHL playoff prediction game where users can earn crypto and exclusive prizes, aiming to spread the word about its regulated platform where both retail and institutional investors can diversify into crypto.
Kula
I next found my way to a booth occupied by Kula, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on securing and tokenizing real-world assets, including water, timber, agriculture and commodities, granting ownership stakes to communities that stand to be affected by future development.
Moving beyond mere portfolio diversification, the Kula platform gives communities a say in the spaces they live in, demonstrating that crypto and blockchain can be drivers of positive change where moral and financial values align.
'We go into typically opaque or corrupt companies and bring transparency, opening them up to investors around the world,' Micah Yeackley, Kula's Co-Founder and CEO, commented from the floor at Consensus 2025. 'When investors get to see the heart of these projects, then blockchain has created value in companies or countries that struggled to see investment before.'
'Real-world mining was the heart of Kula at the start, beginning with a limestone mine in Zambia, but we soon realized that our model can be copied and pasted into any industry,' Yeackley added. 'So, we're working with hydropower in Nepal, timber in Malaysia, agricultural farms in Zambia, as well as copper, cobalt and lithium miners, all of it wrapped in our DAO, looking to make an impact for communities surrounding these assets.'
Proven in the market with 9 MOUs, 5 contracts, 15 partnerships and over US$17.5 million in seed funding and capital raises to date, Kula believes its potential to scale remains largely untapped.
S&P Global
After a fair bit of aimless strolling, one of the conference goer's chief joys, I landed at S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI), one of the top market data providers, whose expertise helps governments, businesses and individuals across the world make high-conviction decisions. Its diversified offerings include sustainability, investment analysis, credit ratings (world leader), benchmarks (world leader), as well as analytics and workflow solutions, all in service of ushering projects up to full potential.
I approached Chuck Mounts, Chief Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Officer at S&P Global Ratings, in the hopes of gaining an established institution's perspective on cryptocurrency and blockchain's long-term prospects, and he did not fail to deliver.
'We think the transformation of markets has begun, with blockchain rails replacing traditional market structures and providing a host of opportunities for investment capabilities,' Mounts said. 'S&P Global is actively deploying our historical expertise to help investors and market participants navigate this new landscape, shining a light on its inherent risks and providing benchmarks to improve decision making, market liquidity and price discovery. I would say we're in the very early stage of this market transformation, with a lot of traditional firms onboarding digital asset capabilities over the past few years, a lot of momentum building up on the policy side of things, particularly in the United States, and increased client engagement combining to catalyze mass adoption of blockchain among traditional market players.'
While cryptocurrency and blockchain assets have only been investable going on 20 years, they are enabling tangible change in the lives of everyday people, helping to bring efficiency to legacy systems and transparency where none existed before while creating significant value.
Case in point, total cryptocurrency market capitalization has grown by over 884 times from C$5.3 billion in 2015 to C$4.67 trillion as of May 14, according to Coin Market Cap, warranting strong optimism about the future as use-cases extend into gaming, voting, real estate, authentication, healthcare, insurance, metaverse building and data storage, among dozens of other industries, with the list likely to continue growing as tokenization extends into non-traditional assets and more people experience the benefits of not having to rely on centralized institutions to save, spend, invest or borrow against their hard-earned funds.
All this is to say that, it seems clear that digital assets are here to stay, but the end-state of their ongoing evolution remains anyone's guess. So make sure to risk-adjust your positions, hold close to due diligence and keep updated on the latest crypto market moves as you explore this exciting asset class and put money to work.
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