This article is from:Vanity Fair
Compiled by|Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator|Moni
"I really can't hold on anymore."
In early February, for several days, the Signal inbox of a large crypto market maker was flooded with dozens of such messages. The crypto market plummeted another 15%—within days, $400 billion in market capitalization vanished into thin air. In the preceding four months, dragged down by Bitcoin, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies had crashed nearly 50%, with Ethereum and Solana both falling close to 60%. This crash wiped out approximately $2 trillion in value, plunging the industry into a bear market, what the crypto circle calls the "winter"—a somewhat nerdy metaphor paying homage to that unsettling line from Game of Thrones: "Winter is coming."
Project founders were in a panic: some urgently tried to go private, others hastily launched emergency equity financings, and some simply abandoned ship and left. Frankly, crypto industry veterans have experienced more severe crashes—the market has plunged 80% or even 90% before—but this time, the chill felt distinctly different.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, while tangled in battles with regulators in Washington, watched his personal net worth evaporate by about $10 billion. Undercurrents of internal矛盾 (contradiction/tension) swirled within Ethereum, with co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeting about fries, expressing concerns about the platform's scaling methods; as an early supporter of Polymarket, he expressed distaste for the direction blockchain prediction markets were becoming极度成瘾 (extremely addictive).Ordinary traders were dismissed by industry elders as "tourists," either panic-selling or turning to trendier hotspots like AI and prediction markets.
Technology without faith and spiritual sustenance is nothing; what we built is a religious movement
"They are all cowards."
Early crypto investor and current Crucible Capital founder Meltem Demirors thus evaluated those peers who fled in panic. She wore layered diamond crosses, a black tracksuit, with the company slogan—"Hold the Faith"—emblazoned on the hip.
In this crypto winter,she started buying Bitcoin again.
One afternoon in February, as the market continued to slide, a small group of true believers gathered in a Beaux-Arts landmark building in Manhattan's Lower East Side—once a bank called the "Temple of Capitalism," now a $300 million renovation into the Nine Orchard hotel, with Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz as its new co-owner.
After collectively seeing their paper wealth shrink by billions,Michael Novogratz, Meltem Demirors, along with core crypto bigwigs like Olaf Carlson-Wee, "Cathie Wood, and Danny Ryan gathered to exchange insights—they weren't talking about what they sold, but what they were buying.
Cathie Wood, holding a wealth of exclusive research data, and Olaf Carlson-Wee, who insisted he never pays attention to the news, were both continuing to add to their Bitcoin positions. Danny Ryan was utterly indifferent to daily fluctuations: "I'm a Luddite," he declared, "If I need to know something, someone will tell me."
"Technology without faith," Meltem Demirors emphasized again, "technology without a spiritual core, is worthless." Unlike the disciples who doubted Jesus's resurrection, crypto's faithful never wavered. "Seriously, what we built was a religious movement from the start."
Gold, commodities, real estate, bonds, stocks—all asset classes answer the same question: where does value come from? In fact, they are products of social consensus, meaningful only because of agreed-upon collective belief.
Gold: value stems from nature and scarcity; Bonds: stem from institutional trust; Real estate: stems from land and permanence; Commodities: stem from the material itself; Stocks: stem from human creativity.
Every asset needs a creation myth, from scarcity to capitalism itself. And in the eyes of those who firmly believe cryptocurrency is the "sixth asset class," its value goes far beyond the financial level. "I've been waiting for this day since the US dollar decoupled from gold in 1971." Cathie Wood recalled Reagan-era economics authority and Laffer curve proponent Arthur Laffer saying to her. Cathie Wood, whose actively managed ETFs are heavily invested in disruptive tech, asked Arthur Laffer: "How big can this idea really get?" His answer spoke to the ultimate fantasy of early crypto believers: "You tell me, how big is the US monetary base?"
On Halloween 2008, six weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers—the fourth largest investment bank in the US—the myth of institutional safety completely collapsed. A mysterious person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto quietly sent a 9-page PDF document to a handful of cryptographers, titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." This "whitepaper" outlined a new financial system that completely bypassed central institutions like banks, governments, and the Federal Reserve, allowing ordinary people to be free from the whims of inflation, asset freezes, and monetary policy. Bitcoin secured itself through "mining"—specialized computers competing to solve cryptographic puzzles—while asset access relied on a unique seed phrase: lose the phrase, the funds are gone forever; memorize it, and you can retrieve your wealth permissionless anywhere in the world.
In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto turned Bitcoin from theory into reality, mining the genesis block. After the rules were established, anti-counterfeiting mechanisms implemented, and Bitcoin began circulating (still worthless then), he disappeared completely. This retreat not only deepened Bitcoin's mythos but also gave it true decentralization: no omnipotent controller remained, this experiment belonged to everyone and no one.
"I fell in love with Bitcoin at first sight," said ShapeShift exchange and Venice AI founder Erik Voorhees. He discovered Bitcoin in 2011 while participating in the libertarian Free State Project in New Hampshire. "I thought Bitcoin could conquer the world. It can't be devalued, no individual or institution can manipulate it, no one can stop it."
This movement took root on the fringes of society, its followers a group of post-financial-crisis rebels: disillusioned with reality, craving social and political change. Early believers were mostly young, male, deeply internet-addicted, cryptopunks on forums, building their own information cocoons,坚信 (firmly believing) cryptography could achieve what regulators never did: redistribute power—Michael Novogratz, wearing a new Valentino red suit, described it: "Bitcoin is like the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars."
From "Fringe Rebels" to Mainstream Force
Crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital founder Carlson-Wee said: "Once you truly understand Bitcoin," you can't unsee it." In 2011, as a senior at Vassar College, he first encountered Bitcoin on online forums and quickly became convinced that cryptocurrency was the future of global finance, even persuading his thesis advisor to let him write his graduation thesis on it. After graduation, Carlson-Wee worked as a lumberjack in Washington state, cold-emailing his resume and thesis to the then-startup Coinbase, which was operating out of an apartment in San Francisco. He was hired within days and became the company's first employee. "Back in those early days, it felt like everyone was guarding a secret the world didn't know yet."
As the "Occupy Wall Street" movement sounded the alarm on worsening wealth inequality in the US, cryptocurrency's advocated ideals of financial autonomy and global financial inclusion also resonated with a generation—who watched trillions of dollars in household wealth evaporate while the government bailed out the banks. "My first day on the trading floor was the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed." Arthur Hayes said. At that time, he was stranded on a remote Japanese island, snowed in, unshaven, wearing a red thermal shirt. "A special way to start a finance career."
Arthur Hayes had once been determined to put down roots in traditional finance: Wharton School, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup. But watching colleagues get laid off during the market crash turned him towards assets he could control himself—first gold, then Bitcoin in 2013. In 2014, unemployed, he was couch-surfing at a friend's place.
The 28-year-old Arthur Hayes co-founded BitMEX, introducing Wall Street-level leverage and derivatives to crypto trading, ultimately creating the "perpetual swap." Traders didn't need to hold Bitcoin; they could just bet on its price rising or falling with 5x, 50x, or even 100x leverage. "Some people lost everything, some got rich overnight." Arthur Hayes said flatly; the fate of early believers was often decided in minutes.
The "perpetual swap" product exploded the market, creating a scale of trillions of dollars and spawning a new generation of "crypto gamblers"—willing to take huge risks, occasionally making millions.
Cryptocurrency had thus become a casino.
With no one in control, who decides the future? This is the core of crypto, and its fatal flaw. Disagreements are everywhere, from ethical use cases to whether the Bitcoin ecosystem should expand to include new tokens. But it was this motley alliance—libertarians, venture capitalists, builders, traders, scammers—that ultimately pushed cryptocurrency into the mainstream.
In the same year Arthur Hayes made Bitcoin more about gambling than gold, 20-year-old Vitalik Buterin—slender, a Thiel Fellowship recipient, who looked like he should have been on the Balenciaga runway in the登巴 (Dumba?) era—completely颠覆 (overturned) the industry.
One day in 2014, Joseph Lubin took Michael Novogratz to Brooklyn to meet members of the Ethereum Foundation—the Ethereum platform officially launched the following year. Through "smart contracts"—self-executing code running on the blockchain—Ethereum allowed developers to build complete financial systems: lending platforms, digital art markets, autonomous organizations. No banks, no corporate overlords, just code.
"Joseph Lubin almost underwent a religious conversion." Michael Novogratz said, "Ethereum will change the world, save the world." The entire economic system migrates on-chain, stablecoins support fragile third-world currencies, open-source finance replaces the opacity of traditional banks. "I was already wealthy, I didn't need the world to be saved, but I thought, this Ethereum thing is interesting."
"I didn't have a eureka moment with Bitcoin." said Etherealize co-founder and president Danny Ryan. With New York temperatures below freezing, his long hair was braided, wearing a thin black T-shirt and a denim jacket, and a plastic yellow nose ring (nose ring) he claimed helped with breathing. Danny Ryan's awakening moment came in 2016 when he discovered Ethereum. In January 2017, he threw himself into Vitalik Buterin's foundation and was soon hired—just as cryptocurrency爆发式 (explosively) flooded into the mainstream.
"It was a crazy golden age." Meltem Demirors recalled.
At a conference in November 2017, she watchedEthereum "geeks" wearing unicorn T-shirts and Hawaiian shirts help investors from Goldman Sachs and a16z set up MetaMask wallets and participate in Initial Coin Offerings.
Subsequently, Bitcoin broke through $10,000, and the total cryptocurrency market capitalization soared from $16 billion to a peak of $535 billion, an annual growth rate of over 3200%.
The emergence of Ethereum meant the crypto world was no longer about one token, one creation myth, one idea. Anyone could build anything, breaking the singularity but also tearing apart the cohesion. The US government始终 (consistently) found itself helpless against an industry born to evade centralization; in the eyes of regulators, cryptocurrency was an impenetrable web of scams.
The following decade saw the market swing repeatedly between狂热 (mania) and crash, countless people's life savings wiped out, while a select few who precisely caught the windfall created generational wealth. And within the crypto ecosystem, the cracks were huge: OGs vs. tourists, idealists vs. scammers, builders vs. traders.
Two Types of People in the Crypto Community: Believers and Scammers
The crypto community is divided into two types of people—
The first type is believers: those who philosophically agree with Bitcoin's original ideals, care about decentralization, privacy, and individual sovereignty. They are vilified precisely because the principles they hold dear conflict with many modern institutions (especially governments and their allied fiat banks).
The second type is scammers: those driving Lamborghinis selling meme coins, utterly unprincipled, mostly entering the space after 2017. Ranging from outright scammers, to slightly speculative, to ignorant fools.
A crypto holder using the pseudonym "Moose" pulled out a Palau ID card—a document from the Pacific island nation of Micronesia he bought online for $200, and this was his credential for accessing offshore derivative platforms unavailable to US users. "Everyone does it." he said. At 27, like many men his age, he first encountered cryptocurrency in the mid-2010s buying drugs and fake IDs on the Silk Road website. His idols weren't athletes or movie stars, but anonymous Twitter accounts—anime avatars, cryptic bios, with fans虔诚 (devoutly) tracking their trading moves.
Jordan Fish operates at another level within the same sphere, online alias "Cobie", Telegram avatar a jumping white puppy. He made early profits staking on Ethereum protocol Lido, later founding the membership-based crypto investment platform Echo, valued at over $300 million. "In 2019, being a cryptobro was still cool, but now, it's not cool at all."
As crypto moved from the fringe to the mainstream, then to a cultural punchline, its promise of disruptive innovation gradually faded. Those who once called themselves rebels increasingly resembled other deeply online youth: gaming, memeing, trading—the糟糕 (terrible) image only made it worse.
In 2023, Arthur Hayes's狂欢派对 (raucous party) at the Singapore TOKEN2049 conference attracted thousands, running out of alcohol within the first hour,最终 (finally) security had to hold back drunk, insistent people trying to get in, almost climbing the walls. Two years later at the same conference in Dubai, Carlson-Wee shuttled between California and the UAE (reportedly working on projects with the local government), partying on the Lotus superyacht, accompanied by DogeOS CEO Jordan Jefferson, wearing what he called a "Habibi Doge" T-shirt—a Shiba Inu wearing a traditional UAE headdress.(A UAE-linked company had injected $500 million into the Trump family's crypto project before his inauguration.)
"Everyone thinks that if you make money in crypto, you'll be on a yacht in Miami surrounded by a hundred prostitutes. During the Cannes Ethereum conference, I spent three consecutive days at La Guérite restaurant." Meltem Demirors said, "I got completely drunk, crawling on the dining table.Ethereum believers hate nice things, hate pleasure, they just want you to eat tofu, wear organic cotton, torture yourself."
There's Another Creature in the Crypto Circle: The "Whale"
Whales are the behemoths of the Bitcoin world.
In crypto slang, whales refer to those holding over 1000 Bitcoin, often possessing digital assets worth over $10 billion, capable of moving markets with single trades. These whales are completely anonymous, never attend conferences, don't throw parties or post controversial tweets:the noisiest voices in crypto are never the richest.
Anonymity, once an ideological act of反抗 (defiance) against centralization, has now become a survival necessity. Being visible in the crypto circle is asking for trouble. Dozens of violent incidents occur in the industry every year: kidnappings, home invasions, armed robberies. Massive data leaks expose asset holdings, turning digital wealth into real-world targets. Last year, a crypto holder in Nolita claimed to have been kidnapped, tortured for two weeks for his password, and narrowly escaped.
"I don't be a public figure anymore." Fish said, because "it could very likely bring physical danger." OpenSea co-founder Devin Finzer and his wife Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo travel with a burly bodyguard who looks more like a Viking pirate than a Secret Service agent. "That's our bodyguard."
There's a long-term survival rule in the crypto circle, the secret is: never be the main character. I'm a supporting character, everyone knows me, but no one really knows why I exist.
On the morning of the Vanity Fair magazine shoot party, Cathie Wood didn't recognize Meltem Demirors, whom she hadn't seen in ten years. "You look younger though." Cathie Wood said, hugging her. "Because I have money now." Meltem Demirors responded with a smirk. Carlson-Wee, like a little boy meeting his idol, meekly introduced himself to Cathie Wood, and the two immediately started chatting about the days when everyone thought they were crazy, their shared belief in "buying when the market falls"—gently skirting the reality that cryptocurrency had fallen nearly 50% in three months.
Michael Novogratz strode in wearing a silver long down jacket, greeted everyone warmly, then complained about being on the second day of a severe hangover—he described Saturday night's狂欢 (revelry), the climax being a 4 a.m. trip to the Burning Man-inspired NYC nightclub Gospël, praying his 30-year-old daughter and new husband living nearby didn't see it.
Ryan stayed in a corner of the room, watching with an expression both amused and horrified. Meltem Demirors and an assistant looked through the clothes they brought. Michael Novogratz debated between a diamond-encrusted black suit and Valentino, while Ryan had only brought two pairs of pants, his favorite pair with a hole in the crotch, which he wore anyway. "It's so hot." he complained barefoot, as a hairstyl blow-dried his shoulder-length hair.
"Where's Devin Finzer?" Meltem Demirors inquired.
Devin Finzer and his wife Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo were in a private suite on the fourth floor, with dedicated assistants, security, celebrity makeup artists, surrounded by haute couture clothing.
Ultimately, after considering millions of dollars worth of haute couture, Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo chose a non-couture Armani gown and didn't wear any JAR jewelry either.
In 2017,Devin Finzer co-founded the NFT marketplace OpenSea—in the eyes of crypto OGs and even his wife, he missed the key threshold to become an OG. His background was a Silicon Valley mother's dream: grew up outside San Francisco, Brown University graduate, majored in Computer Science and Math, former Pinterest software engineer.
When the crypto market exploded, Devin Finzer and friend Alex Atallah decided to build a digital asset version of eBay. Inspired by the Ethereum tokenization boom, especially the digital cat trading platform CryptoKitties, OpenSea was born.
Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Hordes of bored young people flooded into the crypto universe, and NFTs took off.
In 2021, Beeple's NFT artwork sold for $69 million at Christie's, profile picture projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks became status symbols on par with Rolexes and Porsches, some even spending over $1 million on a picture of a rock.
In January 2022, OpenSea's valuation soared to $13 billion. That same year, the young Devin Finzer, overwhelmed by the rapidly expanding company, suddenly found himself in the top echelons of Silicon Valley society, where he met Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo.
"Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo is like a Ferrari engine in a Spice Girl's body." Devin Finzer said.
Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo said that even before the 2022 crypto crash and NFT bubble burst, she had expressed concerns about OpenSea to Devin Finzer, but no one listened. She believed OpenSea was too trend-chasing, Devin Finzer was immature, short-sighted, and failed to pivot quickly enough to a more lasting direction.
"Everyone was hyping Devin Finzer, Forbes cover, 29 years old, good-looking, everyone wanted to charter planes to send him to the Super Bowl, to every dinner party." Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo paused, "I'm not interested in these things."
"It's been a humbling journey." Devin Finzer added softly, "Even when everyone puts you on a pedestal, you still have so much to learn."
The market collapse had been brewing for months—
In 2021, Bitcoin fell from its peak of $69,000 to $16,000, ushering in the industry's harshest winter. OpenSea's valuation plummeted by about 90%.
In May 2022, Terra/Luna collapsed, wiping over $40 billion from its ecosystem within 72 hours, global retail investors lost their life savings. One of crypto's largest hedge funds, Three Arrows Capital, subsequently倒闭 (collapsed).
In November 2022, the industry darling SBF's exchange FTX imploded, collapsing within a week. He was eventually arrested, convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, having stolen up to $10 billion in customer funds.
"Devin Finzer isn't the first boy genius I've mentored." Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo said without elaborating. As the company crumbled and the NFT bubble burst, Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo became Devin Finzer's "product mom," she treats Devin Finzer like a "custom bear." Now, they宣称 (claim) they want to relaunch OpenSea with a grander vision.
However, not everyone has the certainty of Devin Finzer and Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo.
The more mature the blockchain infrastructure becomes, the harder it is to explain what OpenSea can offer that trading platforms like Coinbase and Gemini cannot. Successful projects have raised the bar—like Hyperliquid, Uniswap—now sharing profits with token holders. Most tokens can't compete, issued mainly for governance, with holders only able to vote on protocol decisions, lacking direct economic rights.
FTX's collapse not only plunged the entire industry into the abyss but also triggered what the crypto circle calls a "witch hunt": regulators协同出击 (coordinatedly striking out), trying to strangle a technology they neither understood nor could control. Regulators, however, see the crypto world as the Wild West, and even if the rules aren't perfect, protecting US investors is a good start.
Biden appointed Gary Gensler to head the SEC—this former Goldman Sachs partner and MIT blockchain professor understood cryptocurrency better than any other regulator. Gary Gensler's goal was to tame the industry. The core question: is cryptocurrency a security or a commodity? The answer决定一切 (decides everything): securities fall under SEC jurisdiction, requiring exchanges and token issuers to register, disclose, and comply with investor protection rules designed for stocks—rules made for centralized institutions, not assets that can flow globally without banks, brokers, or borders.
Applying traditional financial regulatory model to a technology whose core is autonomy, privacy, anonymity, and breaking global boundaries is doomed to fail. The crypto circle calls it "regulation by enforcement": Gary Gensler charged multiple companies with violating securities laws, forcefully squeezing crypto-friendly banks out of the system.
"The SEC当时想 (wanted at that time) to litigate crypto into extinction." Ryan said. He recalled setting the Easter Sunday dinner table in 2024 when he received a subpoena. "I was the highest-ranking person from the Ethereum Foundation in the US."
Arthur Hayes was sentenced to six months of home confinement in May 2022 after pleading guilty to willfully failing to implement anti-money laundering controls at BitMEX—specifically, BitMEX allowed US customers to access the platform via VPN. He had once boasted at a conference that bribing officials in Seychelles was cheaper than complying with US regulations. Binance CEO CZ fared worse, sentenced to four months in federal prison in April 2024 for aiding money laundering, with Binance paying a $4.3 billion fine, one of the largest corporate penalties in US history.
Then, Trump made his second appearance. In 2021, he called Bitcoin a scam, but just three years later, he gave a keynote speech at a Bitcoin conference, promising to make the US the "crypto capital of the world." Although Trump's values run counter to the global utopian vision of crypto believers, his support for the industry was enough to win votes.
"No political party in the US is inherently for or against crypto." Arthur Hayes said. If crypto investors become single-issue voters, the question for politicians is only one: "Do you want to court them?"
"I'm probably the only person in crypto who didn't vote for Trump." Michael Novogratz said. A major donor to progressive causes, he had spent years trying to get Elizabeth Warren to meet with him about the industry, but failed. "This industry is still full of political controversy, it shouldn't be, it should be bipartisan consensus. We need rules. The lack of innovation is because there are no rules."
In the final months before Trump's re-election, Ryan received a letter: the case was dismissed. Ryan's lawyer said they had never seen the SEC act like this. "The best outcome is they stop contacting you." But this time, the securities fraud charges just disappeared.
According to Ryan, the Biden administration realized the US presidential race was on a knife's edge and could no longer afford to alienate an entire tech industry. The crypto industry ultimately poured $135 million into the 2024 election, reportedly大部分流向 (mostly flowing to) Republican candidates, supporting districts with a win rate of over 90%.
In 2025, Trump launched his own Meme coin TRUMP, its market cap once surged to $10 billion, but later暴跌 (crashed) 80%. After taking office, he pardoned Arthur Hayes and CZ (SBF remained in prison).
Conclusion
In different eyes, as cryptocurrency渗透 (infiltrates) mainstream institutions, it is either a complete betrayal of its original purpose or proof of the experiment's success. Some of the most staunch decentralization believers now appear in White House closed-door meetings. Those holding cryptocurrency aren't just ordinary people, but also sovereign wealth funds, family offices, corporations with private wealth managers. This movement, born to make Wall Street obsolete, has become its most powerful lobbying force, its most reliable client.
"We won." Moose said, "But after winning, does cryptocurrency just become another ordinary asset class?"
Has the crypto industry become what it once hated? Or is it changing the world from within?
In the depths of winter, the answer is still blowing in the wind, and those believers remain standing firm, holding onto their faith.
