Pauline Shangett - Real Politics Assets - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Nice to meet you all. My name is Pauline and I work for a crypto management platform called Change Now. And today I'm going to be talking not about the service itself. I just want to give you some food for thought. Every time a politician tweets about a coin, um, somewhere in the world a trader loses their savings.

And I'm not here to tell you that crypto and politics don't mix because they do. Oh, they love each other. They're in deep cahoots, if you will. The problem usually is the kind of love story that one side gets rich and another unfortunately gets wrecked. Politics loves crypto but not always for the right reasons.

We're seeing a pattern. Big names, politicians, celebs, influencers discover crypto. They get interested. They make a few tweets, mention a coin, post a meme, maybe even launch their own token. Remember hug to a coin?

Unfortunately, I do too. Um, and what happens? Trading volume spike. Retail users rush in. Some make money, but most of them don't.

And then everything crashes. Next time comes around, and we do it all over again. And let me show you how this plays out. Let's rewind to 2021. Um, we listed Dogecoin right at the peak of the Elon Musk meme wave.

That was in February. And I still kind of shiver anytime I remember about what we were doing back then because we hit an all-time high in trading volume. Doge was trending everywhere, all over social media, on Twitter, on Reddit, on Facebook, even on LinkedIn. It felt unstoppable. Elon Musk was an even bigger icon than before.

But then the crash came. It is ETH and BDC drifted down slowly and Dogecoin dropped like a rock. Fast, hard, and brutal for the newcomers and the late comers as well. All over the fintech space, services started crashing and going down. Robin Hood, Binance, Kraken, and eventually us too.

Even though we did our best to hold out for as long as possible, we worked for three weeks, no weekends, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. And um people went insane.

Um some of them lost their funds for good. It was one of the first big lessons in what happens when celebrity hype collides with crypto markets. Now let's fast forward to 2024 and you can look at the graph. We listed a um very controversial Trump related token on change now. Everybody knows the uh Trump one, right?

And in day one it outperformed ETH BDC everything. But just like in 2021 the hype couldn't hold. ETH and BDC did the same thing. They dipped slightly, but the Trump token, oh, it went over a cliff. Within weeks, liquidity was gone.

Interest had evaporated, and traders were left staring at a chart that looked like a freef fall. Different year, different name, albeit a Sam Dame story. The pattern is clear and there is a formula that nobody wants to admit following. Get a name, get hyped, get volume, and get out before anybody realizes what happened. And because it keeps working, people keep repeating it.

But here's the problem. When hype becomes the norm, regular people become the victims. and is the grifters who are getting rich and the others are getting wrecked. If you think this is just a USA politics, so it's not. In Latin America, we saw it with Libra and actually it's the same person who created the Trump token.

There was a big political narrative, a massive launch push, retail hype went through the roof, and then everything collapsed. It wasn't a project to build adoption. It was the same grifting marketing stunt to own the news cycle. So, who actually gets hurt? Platforms like ours?

No, we do get a short-term boost. We actually make a lot of money from it. Volume spike, new users come in. But here's the reality. When the token fails, it can shake users confidence.

And not just in that token, but in crypto overall, because they weren't here for the tech. They were here for the promise. And they never realized they were part of somebody else's publicity campaign. Let's check the real damage that happens to crypto. First of all, it's reputational because crypto looks like a circus, a casino, but with numbers.

people start believing that it's all just a scam, but with a few extra steps. We've got economic losses because small traders will absorb the short-term losses and long-term growth slows for everybody, devs, projects, platforms, because nobody wants to believe in crypto anymore. It's not just bad PR. It's a systemic adoption killer. So, what if we flipped the script?

What if crypto and governments didn't just flirt on Twitter? What if they actually worked together for more than one news cycle? And let me show you what that actually looks like. For example, Singapore, where we're at right now, is doing it right. They're running three coordinated digital asset programs.

Project Guardian which um owns tokenite assets infrastructure, project orchid which does CBDC research and SGD testnet a sandbox for startups, pilots and innovation. 40 plus banks, regulators and institutions involved. No memecoins, no pumpf fund, no celebrity pumping, just a longterm national strategy. Let's go to Dubai. uh they have this thing called the reuse initiative part of its 2033 uh real estate and economic agenda.

It's about using tokenized systems to build a smarter investment climate and attract real capital. This is about attracting capital and building on it, not just pumping followers on Twitter. We've got a partner uh they're called Ando Finance and they brought tokenized short-term US treasuries into the crypto space, but this time it was quality growth, not a spike, a real actual foundation. So the main question here is how do we stop being a fandom? We if we want meaningful collaboration with governments, we need to act like an industry.

We need consultative councils where platforms and regulators review road mapaps before listings and investments. We need education programs where people are te learning what crypto is, not just how to gamble on it. And we need to spotlight the real builders who elevate projects solving real problems, not just chasing meme attention. At change now, we've listed hundreds of tokens. We do love ourselves some growth as a treat, but not at any cost.

We focus on regulation, utility, and real world value because the next adoption wave won't come from celebrity tweets. It will come from systems, policies, and stability. But there's one more thing that we need to admit. In crypto, we love to say wag me. We're all gonna make it.

But let me ask you, what are we actually making? What are we actually building? Are we building platforms that look just like glorified casinos? Are we building another pump fun copy? Are we just rolling with the hype for a quick cash grab?

And I don't really have an answer for you at this point. And here's the problem that real ideas that actually are going to uplift crypto are not coming from us. They're coming from the outside. Look at the US government. They played the crypto game.

Trump made a whole lot of money and now they're already thinking about how to turn it into tools for millions of people. Just recently, there was an executive order signed that would make it easier to add private assets, even tokenized ones, into 401k savings accounts. And this is not hype. This is real impact. Why?

Because the industry never showed up with its selling plan. And when we don't define the agenda, decisions get made without us, not with us. This has to change. We need a consolidated pool of ideas, not memes, not slogans. We need real solutions for real problems.

We need accessible finance for the people who need it right now. We need transparent systems. We need tools that are going to outlive the hype. Only then will government see us as partners and not just headlines. Only then will crypto have a seat at the table.

Not as a circus, but as an industry ready to build the future. What crypto really needs is bridges between platforms and regulators, innovators and policy makers, and the promise of crypto and the trust of the people who need it the most. Crypto doesn't need more headlines. It needs roots. Stop chasing names.

Start building credibility. Not because it's trendy, but because the future of crypto depends on stable, meaningful adoption. To move forward, we must work with governments and regulators. We need transparent programs using digital assets and tokenization that can create real trust, real use, and real growth for everybody. Let's make this a dialogue, not a tweet.

We're not here to point fingers or give warnings, although I've pointed my finger quite a lot during this speech and for that I am sorry. We're here to invite action to discuss concrete steps, pilot programs, and strategies that are going to turn crypto hype into long-term value. Because mass adoption won't come from celebrities launching yet another token. It will come from credibility, collaboration, and a shared commitment to building the future of finance together. So, I would like to invite you to start that conversation today.