Consensus 2024 is just days away. And this is the 10th consensus that has ever happened. I'm going to be there. And our next two guests are going to be there too. They've also been working very hard at programming this event. And it's going to be spectacular. So we're just going to bring them in. We're going to talk about it. Michael Casey Foster Wright, welcome to first mover.

Hi, Jim. Michael, I'm going to start with you. This is the 10th consensus. Talk to me about what's

going to be different this year. Why is this year special? Well, I mean, one way to frame this is to look back

on what consensus was last year, right? I mean, it was really pretty much in the depths of

crypto winter. We were coming out of the FTX scandal. We were in the midst of the throes of

all of the unwind. There were bankruptcies and everything else. And there was an enormous amount of

tension around policy being very kind of hostile in the US.

That latter part really hasn't changed a lot, unfortunately.

But the market environment has changed considerably, right?

The market, we hit all-time highs for Bitcoin and for other tokens in the first quarter.

We've, of course, seeing the arrival now spectacularly of trad-fi institutions like BlackRock entering in through

the final long-elated approval of Bitcoin ETFs. We've got this buzz around tokenization now as

something that everyone now suddenly, even the BIS, the Bank of International settlements, thinks it's

going to transform the global financial system.

And, you know, you're coming at this time at an intersection between the arrival of AI,

this buzz around this massively transformative technology, and the role that Web3 and,

you know, related technologies could play in resolving that.

So we're in a very different environment we were last year.

Cryptosummer, great time to have a 10th consensus. So I'm actually really pretty excited about this one.

The first consensus I ever attended was a virtual one. And it's just been getting better and better

since then. So I'm also excited, Michael Foster. I want to get you in the conversation

here. Talk to us about what kind of guests we can expect to hear from at the event.

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