Editor's Note: This weekend, an article by Ken Chan(@kenchangh), Co-founder and CTO of Aevo, went viral on the internet. The title of the article is "I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in Crypto".
Ken Chan's attitude in the article is extremely negative. He believes the industry has lost its idealism and turned into the largest super casino in human history with the most participants, and he feels disgusted for having contributed to this casino. Although we do not agree with Ken Chan's views, and many practitioners have refuted them after the article went viral, objectively speaking, his statements do reveal deep-seated issues in the current industry, such as loss of faith and collapse of values.
The following is the original content of Ken Chan's article, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.
The Initial Motivation
When I was a teenager, I was already a very politically motivated person. Among all the books that made me more radical, the ones that influenced me the most were actually the works of Ayn Rand (such as "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged"). In 2016, I was an aspiring libertarian and even donated to Gary Johnson. Besides my strong Randian beliefs, I also loved computer programming, so cryptocurrency was a natural fit for me. The spirit of cypherpunk attracted me. The idea of Bitcoin as a private wealth bank fascinated me—being able to carry a billion dollars in my mind across borders has always been an incredibly powerful concept to me.
However, over time, I felt I lost my initial purpose in the crypto industry. After diving into this field full-time, the enticing early promises about the transformative power of cryptocurrency gradually faded. I became disillusioned with the target users and who we were truly serving. I completely misunderstood who the real users of cryptocurrency were and mistook propaganda for reality. Cryptocurrency claimed to decentralize the financial system, and I bought into it completely, but in reality, it is just a super system for speculation and gambling, a mirror of the real economy.
Reality hit me like a truck. I wasn't building a new financial system at all; I was building a casino, a casino that doesn't call itself a casino, but it is the largest, 24/7, most participatory casino ever created by our generation. Part of me hoped I could at least be proud of spending my entire twenties building this casino, but another part of me felt I completely wasted my twenties. I wasted my life on this—but at least, I made a lot of money from it.
Watch What They Do, Not What They Say
Cryptocurrency is a confusing thing. On one hand, you hear proponents say they want to completely replace the existing financial system with on-chain systems. I can still imagine that world—your bank account holds only USDC or Bitcoin, and you can send a billion dollars to anyone in the world in seconds. This vision is still powerful, and I still agree with it.
But the incentives have completely distorted the direction of reality. In practice, all market participants are happy to throw money into funding the next so-called "Layer 1" (Aptos, Sui, Sei, ICP, etc.). The only winner of the 2020 Layer 1 war was Solana, which fueled a strong speculative drive to compete for the fourth spot (after Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, ??), supporting a market cap of hundreds of billions of dollars.
But did this really move us closer to the ideal new financial system? Despite VCs writing 5,000-word essays trying to convince you, the answer is no. This didn't create a new system; in fact, it burned through the funds of everyone (both retail and VCs), making everyone in the new system poorer.
I'm not just targeting Layer 1s. I could cite countless similar examples: spot DEXs, perpetual futures DEXs, prediction markets, meme platforms, etc. The fierce competition in these tracks does not substantially lead to a better financial system. Contrary to what VCs say, we don't need to build casinos on Mars.
The Gamblification of Economic Models
If I said I had no financial motivation when I first joined the crypto industry, I would be lying. As a reader, you might think it's a bit hypocritical for me to decide to leave the industry after making enough money. Yes, maybe I am hypocritical, but maybe I'm just disgusted with myself for contributing to this quagmire of financialization and gamblification.
Normalizing zero-sum behavior of "quickly making money off each other" is not a way to create long-term wealth. It seems like it is, but it's not. Eight years in crypto have completely destroyed my ability to recognize sustainable business models. Here, you don't need a successful business or product to make money. This industry has a long list of tokens with high market caps and zero users—this completely defies the logic of how the real world operates. If you want to bring value to customers, not just gambling + entertainment (which is what casinos do), these zero-sum business models simply don't work.
Conclusion
I used to think "financial nihilism" was a cute and harmless concept. I thought it was okay to keep pushing zero-sum games onto the next generation. I have no doubt that Bitcoin will eventually reach $1 million one day, but that has nothing to do with the financial games the industry is creating.
This industry mindset is extremely toxic, and I believe it will lead to a long-term collapse of social mobility for the younger generation. You can already see it happening, and we must have the courage to resist these meaningless games.
CMS Holdings once famously said: "Are you here to make money? Or are you here to prove you're right?"
This time, I choose to prove I'm right.
