GM,
We tracked 959 companies across KBW week and we’re here to report what we found.
In this issue:
Upcoming events
Korea ecosystem
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📆 Events
Stablecon overlaps with EthCC next year: April 14–15 in Lisbon 🇵🇹 vs. April 12–15 in Cannes 🇫🇷
🗳️ Poll results from our last issue: Readers are nearly split between Devcon Mumbai (49%) and Hong Kong FinTech Week (39%) - citing Devcon for builders, Hong Kong for finance. Still deciding: 12%
⚠️ Scam event pages show up more around big conference weeks. Fake Luma invites borrow a name-brand company in the title with no real host info, built to harvest user data. Check before you RSVP.
Upcoming:
🇨🇦 Elevate Tech Week — 16-24 Sep, 63 side events
🇪🇺 European Blockchain Convention — 15-20 Sep, 8 side events
🗽 NYC Events — 1-30 Sep, 40 side events
🇺🇸 Sibos Miami — 28 Sep-1 Oct, 7 side events
🇰🇷 Korea Blockchain Week — 26 Sep-3 Oct, 146 side events
🇸🇬 TOKEN2049 — 28 Sep-12 Oct, 226 side events
🇺🇸 SF Tech Week — 5-11 Oct, 153 side events
Ad: Speaking of Token2049, are you raising?
Live-pitch your protocol to Anchorage Digital, then network with investors and ecosystem partners during Token2049 week. RSVP
Korea shows the institutional shift is really global
Once crypto’s great retail market, even Korea is going institutional
Combined trading volume across Korea’s five major exchanges fell 54.6% in H1 2026
This was reflected in our KBW side event count, down 42% from last year
Compared based on the same number of days before the conference
In the methodology, we used our proprietary data alongside public sources to score each company based on the strength of its overall KBW footprint - sponsorships, number of company reps, the side event ecosystem, attendance, and other signals.
The top spenders are both sponsoring the main event and hosting their own side event
And, not coincidentally, they're the companies with the most active raises.
Ripple ($500M raised, Nov. 2025) — main conference sponsor, plus hosting an institutional evening event, and supporting XRP Seoul 2026 and VIP afterparty.
Digital Asset, the developer behind Canton Network, ($355M raised, Jun. 2026) — main conference sponsor, plus co-hosting The Capital Forum with IBM. It’s fresh off hosting Canton Summit in NYC.
Pharos ($44M raised, Apr. 2026) — main conference sponsor, plus co-hosting the RealFi x Asia Stablecoin Conference with Four Pillars and LayerZero.
Others that are both sponsoring and hosting: BitGo, 0G Labs ($40M raised, Nov. 2024); and Stable ($28M raised, Jul. 2025)
Goes without saying, reps of each company are speaking on various panels. See all their side events here.
Other high-scoring companies skipped main event sponsorship
Solana Foundation is in the top spending category despite not sponsoring KBW — it backs Solana Ecosystem Day, Solana Summit Korea, and Frontier Traders.
Monad Foundation also skipped - supporting multiple side events instead (Proof Of Liquidity, Collectible Con Day 1 and Day 2), plus speaking at others.
Ethereum Foundation may not run a commercial GTM, but its spinoffs and allies do:
EthSystems, spun out of its Institutional Privacy Task Force, is co-hosting EthConnect2026, the closed-door institutional Ethereum conference;
SharpLink, the Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury company, sponsors and keynotes it;
and Zama pairs a main-stage slot with a major side-event sponsorship.
Gated events and restrictions
KBW’s main conference and retail events generally just need a ticket; everything else is gated by invitation.
Even Upbit, KBW’s presenting partner, keeps its own Upbit Institutional Summit closed-door. Other closed-door TradFi events are by Circle, Eastpoint or previously mentioned Canton, Solana, etc — about 1 in 5 events.
Notice the absence of foreign exchanges. Without a Korean VASP license, they can't legally market to Korean retail, so they don’t even try. (They sponsor Token2049 instead - more on that in the next issue). Upbit accounted for 67.4% of Korean crypto trading volume.
TL;DR: Our findings in Korea reflect the state of the industry as a whole: the bear market has pulled back activity, while what remains is very selective, private, and increasingly institutional.
Next issue: Token2049 Singapore. We're running the same analysis for Token2049 week. Let us know what you’d like to hear about.
Or get a customized brief - a ranked list of who your company should meet, who's spending the most (likely to pay) and how to get introduced, by replying to this email.
Community Updates
From our private community
Welcome new member, Roberto Rosato, Relationship Manager at AMINA Bank
Simon from Superteam Canada is hosting Solana Summit Canada, 23-24 Sep
We’re hiring a Product Designer
About Us
Mira is the discovery platform for digital finance and frontier tech - events, companies, jobs, and the people building it
We also run a private community for founders and builders
