I did not expect to feel this way.

By most measures, we are in the middle of a historic crypto winter. Prices have been low. Sentiment has been even lower. If you’re looking for the kind of market euphoria that typically makes conference season feel electric, you won’t find it in the charts right now.

And yet I have never been more excited about a Consensus event.

I have run Consensus since 2021, long enough to know the difference between manufactured hype and a genuine inflection point. This is a genuine inflection point.

The price narrative has been noisy, but the infrastructure narrative has been quietly extraordinary. The headlines on CoinDesk have been writing themselves — real financial integrations, not pilots or promises:

A year…