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The annual Web3 Investor Gathering at the Seehof Hotel in Davos, co-hosted by Blockchain Founders Capital and Animoca Brands, brought together an illustrious group of political experts, fund managers, and crypto experts to discuss why 2025 is poised to become a year of mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies.

With President Donald Trump's inauguration just the day before, there were many discussions about his executive orders regarding crypto and how US regulation will finally become a key driver of mass adoption.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, kicked off the session with his keynote address: 

“When you get Donald Trump, you get everything. You get the meme coins, you get the 100% tariffs, you get the bellicosity of the rhetoric.”

“But like or dislike Donald Trump, he understood that a big part of this industry needs to be in the United States.”

In a fireside chat with Wolfgang Männel, Yat Siu, chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, said, “AI, and particularly tokenization and blockchain, is so relevant because it's the native digital currency of essentially the digital world, which is what an AI is.”

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“I see digital identity as the basis for building a reputation layer. The reputation industry powers trillions of dollars and provides a much more inclusive economy.”

Olav Chen, Head of Storebrand Asset Management’s team, a leading financial player in the Nordic market, said, “Web3 will impact our industry, which is a dinosaur today, in many ways, starting with near-time clearing and settlement processes.”

Himanshu Gulati, a Norwegian member of Parliament, adds, “We politicians are often slow to understand the impact of new technologies because we are too busy with other challenges. That’s why we have invited successful blockchain companies to speak in the Norwegian parliament to educate us.”

Nitin Gaur, founder and CTO of LedgerLink, hosted a panel with Annelise Osborne from Kadena, Philipp Vonmoos from Solana, Gordon Liao from Circle, and Porter Stowell from Filecoin Foundation on “Blockchain Infrastructure and Stablecoins for Institutional DeFi” and said, “Corporates right now just transfer about $23 trillion in cross border payments. JP Morgan estimates that $120 billion was spent on fees. Now, that's not even currency risk. There is a considerable cost benefit to be captured.“

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Evan Auyang, president of Animoca Brands, talked about the company's transformation from a previous focus on gaming startups to a digital version of an investment bank providing digital asset advisory and banking services.

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Alan Lau, chief business officer of Animoca Brands, spoke about AI agents and blockchain, saying, “I think the real innovation comes when crypto is involved. You're giving wings to AI agents when you have something that can act autonomously but with money. In some way, crypto was made for machines. It wasn't made for humans.”

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Bibin Babu, co-founder of Paycio, hosted a panel with Laura Inamedinova from Gate.io, Gopi Kannappan from bitsCrunch, Prakash Somosundram from AYA, and Constantin Kogan from TDX on “The Future of Finance”. 

He said, “560 million people currently have crypto exposure, and less than 8 million actually use decentralized finance. If we want more people to use crypto, we must improve the user experience significantly.”

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Terence Kwok, founder of Humanity Protocol, talked about reclaiming digital identity to reduce fraud, saying, “We think having sort of a credential ability on the blockchain will unlock a lot of opportunity in this space.” In the case of Humanity Protocol, this is based on biometrics, the scan of your palm.

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Vivek Anand Oberoi, the famous Indian actor turned businessman, says, “I believe in blockchain. It works. However, there's a trust deficit with Web3, which needs to be communicated by utility. And with mass adoption will come mass investments. Right now, you're still looking at limited pools of capital. But this can change very quickly.”

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Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm who took his company public at a $19 billion valuation in 2021, said, “Stablecoins are probably the best device for sorting out the crossborder India receives. The largest percentage of that comes from people remitting to India. That's probably $120 billion last year. So, remitting at a lower cost by leveraging Stablecoin would be a fascinating use case.”

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Sagar Barvaliya stated: “This was the best lineup of speakers we've ever had, combining battle-hardened entrepreneurs, savvy global investors, and renowned Web3 experts. This forum is a treasure for know-how exchange, allowing us to learn from each other's successes as well as from the things that didn’t go as planned. And this is what Davos is all about.

The Davos Web3 Investor Gathering will return in 2026.