(Bloomberg) -- As the crypto market emerges from a brutal winter, gone are the hordes wearing leather vests and cowboy hats, hawking Jelly Donut NFTs.

At the CoinAgenda conference held this week in Puerto Rico, the mood was more serious than in previous editions. The attendees, mostly dressed in business casual, were focused on the less flashy aspects of the blockchain.

“This is a room full of people with their heads down trying to build something great and improve the world, rather than being drunk on money,” said Rob Montgomery, the founder of Resonate, an Atlanta-based company that helps firms access digital assets.

“Crashes have a way of forcing out the trash and forcing the scammers to go elsewhere,” he said. “Now they’re all busy peddling AI.”

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The change in tone reflects the brutal reality that hit the crypto industry last year, when a series of scandals and regulatory actions triggered a market slide. Among the casualties was FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of defrauding customers of his now-bankrupt crypto exchange. 

Even as Bitcoin prices have doubled this year to about $43,000, they’re still down 33% from a 2021 peak.

Michael Terpin, who brought the CoinAgenda conference to Puerto Rico seven years ago, says it’s time for the event to grow up. He plans on relaunching the conference next year with a shorter format and a new name that won’t have the word “coin” in it.

Puerto Rico, a US territory, has lucrative tax breaks that have made it a hotbed for crypto. Besides Terpin, Puerto Rico is home to Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead, Tether co-founder Brock Pierce and Horizen Labs co-founder Rob Viglione.

Pedro Rivera, who runs Crypto Mondays, a weekly gathering of blockchain enthusiasts in San Juan, said the approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which is expected by early next year, could spark a new wave of interest in crypto, and by extension, in Puerto Rico.

“A lot of people who were moving to the island thinking they were going to be rich on crypto gains — that kind has fallen away in the last year,” said Rivera. “But they will probably be back with the next bull market.”

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