Author: BlockBeats
If you've been in the crypto industry for the past few years, you must have felt that growing sense of "burnout."
Last weekend, the lengthy post by Aevo co-founder Ken Chan undoubtedly struck a chord with many. He used an extreme title—"I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in the Crypto Industry."
This isn't just one person's state; it's the collective exhaustion of the industry. Ken wrote the truth many dare not admit: in the crypto industry, it's really easy to lose your sense of time.
It's Not All Unfounded
You might have stayed up late for airdrops, watched the charts for listings, chased narratives by buying high and selling low, researched a new protocol all night, or participated in countless hours of unpaid labor for community governance. From romantic libertarianism, to on-chain autonomy experiments, to today's runaway frenzy of memes, perpetuals, and gambling-themed tracks—all of this is enough to make one wonder: are we really participating in a technological revolution, or are we just working for an infinitely greedy casino?
Practitioners' doubts are not because they are not steadfast enough, but because of the crypto industry's own brutal structure: narrative life cycles are shorter than product life cycles; hype outweighs fundamentals; speculation moves far faster than building; hero worship coexists with collective suspicion; the end for many projects is not failure, but disappearance.
We must be honest: Ken's feelings are something many have experienced. And these doubts are not unfounded.
The weight of the question, "What are we really坚持ing for?" might be far heavier than "Will the price of Bitcoin go up?"
So when we say "we believe in crypto," what exactly are we believing in? Are we believing in project teams? No. Are we believing in some celebrity KOL? Of course not. Are we believing in一个个 narratives? That's even less likely.
Many suddenly realize: the one thing they have truly believed in all along likely boils down to this: what we are still坚持ing and believing in is the meaning of crypto for this world.
Therefore, shortly after Ken's article went viral, Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, wrote another response article—"I Don't Regret Spending Eight Years in Crypto."
What is the meaning of crypto for this world? Nic Carter gave his five points: making the monetary system sounder, encoding business logic with smart contracts, making digital property rights real, improving capital market efficiency, and expanding global financial inclusion.
Don't Forget Why We Started
Whenever the industry falls into chaos, perhaps we can reread the Bitcoin whitepaper.
A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System—that's the first sentence of the whitepaper.
2008, financial crisis, banks failing, Lehman Brothers collapsing. Financiers and politicians made the whole world pay for their risks and mistakes.
Bitcoin was born not to create wealth, but to answer a question: "Can we build a monetary system that does not rely on any centralized institution?"
For the first time in history, humanity possessed a currency that required trust in no one. It is the world's only truly不属于 any country, company, or individual's financial system. You can criticize ETH, criticize Solana, criticize all L2s, criticize all DEXs, but few criticize Bitcoin, because its original intention has never changed.
Any Web2 company can close your account tomorrow; but no one can stop you from sending a Bitcoin tomorrow. There will always be people who dislike it, distrust it, even attack it, but no one can change it.
Water does not contend, yet it benefits all things.
Global inflation normalization, soaring sovereign debt, asset scarcity after long-term declining risk-free rates, financial repression, lack of privacy... The existence of these problems means the vision of the crypto industry is not outdated but more urgent. As Nic Carter said: "I have never seen a technology that can push capital market infrastructure upgrades more than crypto."
Why This Is Not a Failed Industry
Ken said he wasted eight years. But did we really waste our青春?
In countries with hyperinflation like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, BTC and stablecoins have become the de facto "shadow financial system"; hundreds of millions of people unable to access the banking system have owned global digital assets for the first time; humanity possesses a globally accessible asset it can truly control for the first time; international payments no longer need banks for the first time; billions of people can access the same financial system for the first time; financial infrastructure begins to脱离 national borders; an asset not reliant on violence and power begins to be recognized globally...
For a country with high inflation, a stable, non-depreciating currency is like a Noah's Ark, which is why stablecoins account for 61.8% of crypto trading volume in Argentina. For freelancers with overseas business, digital nomads, and the wealthy class, USDT is their digital dollar.
Compared to hiding dollars under the mattress or risking black market currency exchange, clicking a mouse to convert pesos into USDT seems more elegant and safe.
Whether it's cash transaction by a street vendor or a USDT transfer by the elite, it is essentially a distrust of national credit and a protection of private property. In a country with high taxes, low welfare, and constantly depreciating currency, every "grey transaction" is a反抗 against institutional plunder.
For a hundred years, the Rose Palace in Buenos Aires has changed hands batch after batch, and the peso has been废弃了一张又一张. But the common people, relying on underground transactions and grey wisdom, have硬是 found a way out in a dead end.
Almost all of the world's top 20 funds have established Web3 departments; TradFi institutions continue to pour in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); national digital currency systems use Bitcoin as a reference; digital asset ETFs across the US are刷新 new records for capital inflows; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has jumped into the top ten global assets...
Even with bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, some facts have already occurred. These changes have somewhat tangibly changed the world. And we are standing in an industry that will continue to change the global financial structure.
Have We Really Left Nothing Behind?
Many will still ask: "If 15 years from now, all these chains are gone, projects are gone, protocols are replaced by more advanced infrastructure. Then what we are doing now, isn't it still wasting our青春?"
Look at another industry: the 2000 internet bubble burst, NASDAQ plummeted 78%; in 1995 Amazon was called "a website selling books"; in 1998 Google was considered "not as good as Yahoo"; in 2006 social networks were seen as "teenage rebellion."
The early internet was full of: thousands of dead startups; completely vanished innovations;大量 investments lost; tens of thousands of people thought they had wasted their青春.
Early BBS, portals, dial-up internet, paid email—almost none exist today, 90% of the first-generation mobile internet products did not survive. But they were by no means a "waste"; they constituted the soil for the mobile era.
The infrastructure they created: browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers,它们成就了: Facebook, Google, Apple, the entire foundation of mobile internet, cloud computing, and AI. The history of social networks is a constantly破碎 cycle, just as TikTok today is built upon countless dead social networks.
Each generation replaces the previous one, but no generation is in vain.
No industry's journey is clean, linear, clear, correct, or has clear answers. All foundational tech industries experience chaos, bubbles, trial and error, misunderstanding, until they change the world.
The crypto industry is the same.
The technological revolution of the crypto industry has never been accomplished by a single generation. Everything we do, even if ETH is replaced by other chains in the future, L2s are rewritten by new architectures, the DEXs we use today all disappear, will absolutely not be in vain.
Because we provide the foundational soil, the trial and error, the parameters, the social experiments, the path dependence, the experience and samples absorbed by the future. Not the final outcome itself.
Moreover, you are not alone in坚持ing.
Around the world, there are still millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders pushing this era slowly forward. We are with you.
——Written for those who remain on this path.
