An Op-Ed by Bharath Chari
There is a growing emptiness in the way the “future of finance” is being spoken about, especially within the world of blockchain and digital assets. I have watched the term lose its weight. It once carried a sense of purpose, that technology could make finance more inclusive, more efficient, more humane. Now it feels like a slogan printed on banners, hanging over rooms full of people who mistake enthusiasm for expertise.
I rarely attend these blockchain or crypto events myself, but I hear enough from those who do. The stories are always the same. The music is loud, the branding immaculate, the lighting theatrical. Panels are introduced with great fanfare, and everyone seems certain that history is being made. Yet when the noise fades, what remains is a kind of weightless conversation, confident, circular, and disconnected from anything that resembles real finance.
The people who actually understand money, who know what it means to move it across borders, to account for it, to secure it, to lend it, are rarely there. In their place stand influencers, marketers, and consultants, all high-fiving each other for having redefined the world, though no one can quite say how.
Finance, at its heart, is about connection. It is about savers and borrowers, exporters and importers, risk and reward. It depends on coherence, on systems that work together so that value can move safely and predictably. But there is little coherence left in what are called “future of finance” gatherings. They sound more like social clubs than laboratories of innovation, more like echo chambers than engines of progress.
Perhaps, once, the chaos could be excused. Every new movement begins with energy before it finds discipline. But we are past that phase. Blockchain is not new anymore. It is mature enough to demand seriousness. And yet, instead of that seriousness, we are served a steady diet of conferences and sponsorships, the performance of innovation rather than its practice. The people actually building things rarely have the time to attend. They are too busy doing the work that does not photograph well.
The sponsors are the strangest part of it all. Large companies spend millions on these exercises in mutual validation, convinced that visibility equals relevance. They call it thought leadership, but it looks more like theatre. All that money could fund real pilots, real integrations, real inclusion. It could make a measurable difference. Instead, it buys a few hours of applause and a highlight reel for social media.
This is how the industry loses credibility, not through failure, but through triviality. When the spectacle becomes the substance, when the conversation replaces the work, what remains is not a movement but a parody of one. Regulators see it. Banks see it. The public sees it. And slowly, they all turn away, unimpressed.
Still, beyond the noise, the real builders exist. Quiet teams working on rails for remittances, on digital currencies that actually settle, on systems that reach the people who need them. They are not on stage, but they are the ones giving meaning to the technology. They are what remains true beneath the theatre.
The future of finance will not be announced from a stage. It will arrive quietly, in systems that work, in trust that can be measured, in value that actually moves. It will not need hashtags or after-parties. It will need patience, skill, and integrity.
Until then, the lights will keep flashing, the applause will keep echoing, and the same faces will keep celebrating themselves, a spectacle that claims to shape tomorrow but cannot see how far it has drifted from reality.