Signal Week Merges Crypto and Traditional Finance Under One Umbrella

The rebranding of Paris Blockchain Week into Signal Week reflects how cryptocurrency has matured into a global phenomenon. The event is now consolidating with RAISE Summit, an annual conference focused on AI and networking, alongside Machina Summit, Europe's premier gathering for physical AI. Organizers anticipate drawing around 2,500 attendees, underscoring blockchain's rising prominence in the business world.

Michael Amar, chairman of RAISE Summit and co-founder of Signal Week, explained the strategic reasoning: "The industry has changed a lot. We really want to be the place where we bridge traditional finance and digital assets. It's where the market is finally, and we are embracing it completely. We have the desire to go abroad to launch other conferences. So it made sense that … we join everything under the same roof, but different flows, different marketing and different ticketing." Amar and co-founder Charlie Meraud, also chairman of RAISE Summit, outlined their vision during an exclusive conversation with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming platform.

A signal of crypto's growing presence

Signal Week's core mission centers on exploring where institutional finance intersects with digital assets. The tokenized real-world assets market has expanded to $40 billion since the crypto sector's inception, according to Meraud. The conference will also feature the CXO Summit, an exclusive forum for senior executives.

Meraud described the CXO Summit's approach: "The CXO Summit is organizing a roundtable under Chatham House rules with these … crypto-native players discussing all sophisticated topics around what they are building and how they can partner all year long. This is the kind of activation that makes people book a flight, buy a ticket and come to Signal Week. The industry needed a room for these players to connect and start actually doing business."

Both founders view creating dialogue between crypto industry leaders and traditional finance executives as central to the conference's value proposition. The event will draw chief executives from Kaiko, Morpho and Fireblocks, prominent companies in the digital asset space. European Union regulators are also expected to participate, a presence the founders emphasize as essential for grasping the trajectory of AI-driven finance.

Amar elaborated on the networking opportunities: "We're creating those moments where people can get the most out of the conference. If you talk about the C-suite, people coming from traditional finance and meeting the makers of the crypto industry, we're creating the space where they will have talks in a very small room where actually we go very much into the details of the use cases of the implementation of a digital asset solution for a bank, for example."

Custody—the practice of securing private keys that prove ownership of cryptocurrency holdings—will rank among Signal Week and RAISE Summit's major discussion points. The cryptocurrency sector has long grappled with security concerns, prompting numerous custodial approaches.

Meraud noted the evolution: "When we started … self-custody was one of the promised digital assets. A lot of players have been offering different ways of custodying digital assets. And having the most sophisticated solution coming to Signal Week, explaining all the new features, they've been building over the years is one of the reasons financial institutions are willing to connect and network with our audience."

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