Tokenize! Vegas 2025 and BitAngels Spotlight Top Blockchain Startups
At the second annual Tokenize! Global & BitAngels Day in Las Vegas, blockchain visionaries gathered at an opulent mansion, where luxury met web3 innovation.
As entrepreneurs, founders, investors, and those simply curious about blockchain took their first step into Michael Terpins' Las Vegas mansion, something electric lingered in the air, not the flash of slot machines or the glitter of marquees, but the collective charge of ideas, ambition, and world-changing technology converging under one luxurious roof. The second annual Tokenize! Global & BitAngels Day unfolded not in an expo hall, but in a sprawling estate. Information was exchanged beside luxurious, sunlit pools, where a statue of an ancient warrior stood guard, echoing the spirit of blockchain: timeless, resilient, and written to endure. Here, blockchain met elegance, and the future of decentralized innovation found its stage.
✨ Spotlight on Innovation: Meet the Winners
At the heart of the experience were two exhilarating pitch competitions, each a microcosm of the movement: small teams with big visions tackling the most entrenched inefficiencies of finance, gaming, real estate, and data.
🏆 Tokenize! Best of Show:
1st Place – Lussa: Presented by Dr. Adel Elmessiry, Lussa captured imaginations with its Web3 gaming ecosystem, “Lussa: The Final Frontier.” Offering a manipulation-resistant platform with high-speed, low-cost transactions, Lussa promises not just a fairer metaverse but a more enduring one.
2nd Place – Chateaushi: Brittany Kaiser, renowned for her digital rights advocacy, introduced a project just as historic, literally. Chateaushi breathes life into legacy architecture by tokenizing real estate and enabling fractional ownership via its $CASL token. Think castles, but decentralized.
3rd Place – LitecoinVM: Roc Zacharias unveiled a sweeping vision for Litecoin, long viewed as Bitcoin’s little brother. By fusing BitcoinOS, Polygon CDK, and AggLayer, LitecoinVM transforms a legacy chain into a modern zk-powered omnichain stack.
🌟 BitAngels Network Competition:
1st Place – MatterFi: Mehow Pospieszalski’s MatterFi stood tall with its AI-enhanced, privacy-first wallet infrastructure. Backed by partners like EQIFi and Trrue, the startup's secure, chain-agnostic design makes compliance and decentralization dance hand-in-hand. MatterFi secured significant funding from investors at our event. Big congrats!
2nd Place – Tachi: Parth Pathak and team boldly brought programmable DeFi to Bitcoin itself. Through recursive UTXO logic and scalable metalayers, Tachi builds atop Bitcoin’s foundation without disturbing its core.
3rd Place – AIQuant: Marlon Williams delivered an exciting peek at the future of crypto trading: autonomous agents powered by AI, operating 24/7 across Base, BSC, and Solana. Sophisticated yet gamified, AIQuant makes algorithmic strategy more accessible than ever.
Honorable Mention – LenderFi: For pioneering the first liquid-staked RWA tokens, LenderFi earned accolades from both judges and peers alike, underscoring the rising tide of tokenized real-world assets.
🏆 The Circle of Trust: Judges and Community
A gathering of this magnitude is only as powerful as those who guide it. The judging panel at Tokenize! included respected voices across venture capital, law, technology, and early-stage growth. Deep thanks go to Utkarsh Ahuja (Moon Pursuit Capital), Omar Al-Sobky (Block Consult / Magnus Capital), Guarav Dubey (TDeFi), Mansoor Madhavji (Blockchain Founders Fund), Josh Lawler (Zuber Lawler), Sheldon Weisfeld (Sadana Global Services), and Player1Taco (Manifest Network). Their insights and questions elevated every pitch and every founder who stepped forward.
🚀 What Comes Next
San Juan: December 8–10, 2025
🌴 The next chapter of Tokenize! will unfold in Puerto Rico, where the spirit of innovation meets Caribbean sunlight. Tokenize! Latin America will take place during the city’s annual Blockchain Week, which is expected to bring together over 2,500 attendees, more than 100 speakers, and 80 exhibitors. The lineup includes Brock Pierce, Matt Roszak, Bruce Fenton, Jamie Rogozinski, Adryenn Ashley, Joyce Chow, and Michael Terpin. Themes will include decentralized finance, NFTs, artificial intelligence, and regulatory trends shaping the Latin American ecosystem. RSVP here: https://tokenizeconference.com
Aboard the Sea: March 21-28, 2026
🛳️ In a move that feels both inevitable and daring, Tokenize! will set sail. The BitAngels / San Juan Social Mastermind Cruise, hosted by Michael Terpin and Daven Michaels, will offer seven days of connection, strategy, and island beauty. Departing from San Juan aboard Virgin Voyages’ Valiant Lady, the journey will include stops in Tortola, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, and St. Maarten. The ocean will become a backdrop for building the future. Reserve your spot here: https://sjsocialclub.com/cruise-order-page-2026
Las Vegas: June 2026
🎲 The energy of the Tiger Mansion will rise again in the desert. The setting, the format, and the vision all return in 2026, refined and expanded. There will be more curated panels, more deliberate encounters, and more moments where someone looks across the room and sees their future reflected back at them.
Blockchain startups can apply to pitch here: https://bitangels.network/apply-to-pitch
🧠 Why It Matters
Tokenize! is more than an event, it’s a state of mind. A belief that innovation thrives where connection is intentional, where the right minds gather not by accident, but by design. We build ecosystems, strengthen networks, and foster the kind of serendipitous collaboration that happens when a smart contract engineer shares breakfast with an angel investor, or when a gaming founder finds their next CTO over poolside espresso.
In a world where conferences can be large and overwhelming, Tokenize! serves as a reminder that intimacy scales when approached with care, and that the most powerful tools come from human creativity and collaboration..
Here’s to building the future, together, boldly, beautifully.
