Crypto crowd dominate Davos main street despite price crash

A free bitcoin pizza stall and a "Liquidity Lounge" were among the treats on offer for attendees at this year's meeting in Davos, where blockchain and cryptocurrency firms have taken over its main street, despite a recent crash in digital coin values.

Executives from the crypto sector have descended on the annual gathering of business leaders and politicians in the Swiss Alpine resort, seeking to encourage faster adoption of their technology, which is largely unregulated.

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The crypto crowd's prominence at Davos, while largely on the sidelines of the main event, comes as cryptocurrencies shed $800 billion in market value earlier this month.

Small traders have flocked to crypto in the hope of quick returns, despite warnings from regulators that the emerging assets can be high risk. Luna, until recently the eighth-biggest  and backed by institutional crypto investors, has shed nearly all of its value.

Bitcoin teller machine. File photo

"What surprised me was just how fast it completely imploded into nothing," Jeremy Allaire, CEO and cofounder of Circle Internet Financial, whose USDC stablecoin is pegged to the US dollar, said of Luna's collapse.

"To see something that seemed like an apparent, high growth competitive thing just completely implode to zero in 72 hours, I've have never seen anything like that," he told Reuters.

But recent losses have not dented the crypto companies' plans to show off their products and services.

Securrency Inc, a digital market infrastructure backed by Abu Dhabi, came to Davos for the first time this year "to build relationships and network" and show how it can bridge new technologies and traditional finance, said CEO Dan Doney.

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