By Xinghui Kok and Rae Wee
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -From making predictions about a multi-trillion stablecoin market to praising U.S. President Donald Trump for his support of the crypto industry, a high-profile
conference in Singapore this week added to the buoyant mood in the industry.
Around 25,000 people gathered at the two-day TOKEN2049 conference that ended on Thursday, collecting merchandise from crypto firms, while listening to speakers like the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, and China-born entrepreneur Justin Sun.
The annual Singapore edition of TOKEN2049 took place in the midst of a boom in Asia -- total crypto transaction volume in the region grew to $2.36 trillion as of June, up from $1.4 trillion a year earlier, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
The conference also bolstered Singapore's efforts to promote itself as a global crypto hub, though a series of high-profile crashes dealt a blow to those ambitions and led authorities
to tighten regulatory scrutiny.
Some of the conference attendees zoomed along a zipline to get a free backpack, got airbrushed tattoos, tried out a cryotherapy chamber and played pickleball as DJs played thumping music on every floor.
"When I came in this morning and I heard the music, I had chills," said Hubert Tang, a 60-year-old who works in the operations team for an investment academy in Singapore. "How can this not be the new era?"
Multiple events were spun out from the conference at a five-storey convention centre in the Marina Bay Sands resort, which included more than 120 listed as parties or dinners and a fight night with some crypto industry participants facing off in a boxing ring.
Nine of the parties on yachts and local nightclub Zouk were bought out for 500 conference attendees on Thursday, with the club accepting crypto payments - from bitcoin to ethereum, USDC, Tether and Binance Pay.
"Secretary (Scott) Bessent with the (U.S.) Treasury predicted that the stablecoin global market cap would be above $1 trillion in the next couple of years," said former White House crypto policy executive Bo Hines, who is now CEO of Tether's newly created U.S.-based stablecoin venture.
"... it's a very conservative estimate. I think it can be much greater than that."
In a reversal of participants' mixed feelings about Trump's impact on the crypto industry at the TOKEN2049 conference held in Dubai in May, most panelists at the Singapore edition were optimistic about his support for the sector.
Once a crypto sceptic, Trump has launched his own cryptocurrency and supported the industry with a law to create
a regulatory regime for dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies that are known as stablecoins.
"(President Trump) has single-handedly saved the crypto industry from people who wanted to ruin it, and he's brought crypto back to its rightful home, the United States of America," said Zach Witkoff, son of President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday, sitting next to Donald Trump Jr on the stage.
Witkoff and Trump Jr reiterated their bullish stance on cryptocurrencies and spoke at length about the progress that the industry has made under the Trump administration. Their comments were at times met with cheers from the floor.
"I think stablecoins are going to be the thing that backfills all of these countries that used to buy U.S. Treasuries," Trump Jr said.
"We're going to do that, and that's going to create and maintain the dollar hegemony that's allowed America to lead, that's allowed us to have the power over the world that has kept so many places safe, sound and strong."
Ophelia Wong, who works in the food and agriculture industry, said she flew in from Hong Kong just for the event, her third time at the conference in the city-state.
"Booming," said the 62-year-old, who started investing in crypto last year, when asked to describe the industry in one word. "It's an irreversible journey."
(Reporting by Xinghui Kok and Rae Wee in Singapore; additional reporting by Jun Yuan Yong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Thomas Derpinghaus)
