The mood among top venture capitalists at Consensus Hong Kong was not retreat, but recalibration, as the crypto market experienced a prolonged downturn.

Hasseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, described today’s venture market as a “barbell:” On one side, proven verticals compounding at scale; on the other, a narrow set of high-risk, next-generation bets.

“There’s stuff that’s working, and it’s just like, scale it up, go even bigger,” Qureshi said, pointing to “stablecoins, payments and tokenization in particular.” In a market that’s cooled from speculative excess, these are the sectors still demonstrating product-market fit and revenue.

On the other side is crypto’s intersection with artificial intelligence…