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If you've been in the crypto industry for the past few years, you must have felt the growing sense of "burnout."
Last weekend, the long-form article by Aevo co-founder Ken Chan undoubtedly struck a nerve with many. He used an extreme headline: "I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in Crypto."
This isn't just one person's sentiment—it's collective exhaustion across the industry. Ken articulated a truth many are afraid to admit: in the crypto space, it's incredibly easy to lose your sense of time.
None of this is baseless.
You may have pulled all-nighters chasing airdrops, stayed glued to your screen during token launches, bought and sold based on narratives, spent entire nights researching a new protocol, or contributed countless hours of unpaid labor to community governance. From romantic ideals of libertarianism, to on-chain self-governance experiments, to today’s meme-fueled, perpetuals-driven, gambling-oriented sectors spinning out of control—this journey makes you wonder: Are we really participating in a technological revolution, or are we just working at an infinitely greedy casino?
The skepticism among practitioners isn’t due to lack of conviction, but rather stems from the brutal structure of the crypto industry itself: narrative lifecycles shorter than product development cycles; hype outweighing fundamentals; speculation moving far faster than actual building; hero worship coexisting with collective doubt; and for many projects, the end isn't failure—it's simply vanishing.
We must be honest: many people have experienced Ken’s feelings. And these doubts are not unfounded.
The weight of the question—"What exactly are we still holding on to?"—may be far heavier than "Will Bitcoin’s price go up again?"
So when we say "we believe in crypto," what are we actually believing in? Are we believing in project teams? No. Are we believing in some celebrity KOL? Of course not. Are we believing in each passing narrative? Even less likely.
Many suddenly realize: what they’ve truly believed in all along might boil down to just one thing—the meaning that crypto holds for the world.
That’s why shortly after Ken’s article went viral, Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, quickly published a response: "I Don’t Regret Spending Eight Years in Crypto."
What is crypto’s significance to the world? Nic offered five points: making monetary systems more robust, encoding business logic via 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 should reread the Bitcoin whitepaper once more.
"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash"—that’s the very first sentence.
In 2008, the financial crisis hit. Banks collapsed. Lehman Brothers fell dramatically. Financiers and politicians made the entire world pay for their risks and mistakes.
Bitcoin wasn’t created to make people rich. It was born to answer a question: "Can we build a monetary system that doesn’t rely on any centralized institution?"
For the first time in history, humanity possessed money that requires no trust in anyone. It’s the only financial system in the world that truly belongs to no country, company, or individual. You can criticize ETH, criticize Solana, criticize every Layer 2, criticize every DEX—but few ever criticize Bitcoin, because its初心 (original intent) has never changed.
Any Web2 company can shut down your account tomorrow; but no one can stop you from sending Bitcoin tomorrow. There will always be people who dislike it, don’t believe in it, or even attack it—but no one can change it.
Like water, which contends with nothing, yet nourishes all things.
Persistent global inflation, soaring sovereign debt, asset scarcity amid prolonged low risk-free rates, financial repression, and loss of privacy—these problems mean crypto’s vision is not outdated, but more urgent than ever. As Nic Carter said: "I’ve never seen a technology better positioned to upgrade capital market infrastructure than crypto."
Why this isn’t a failed industry
Ken says he wasted eight years. But did we really waste our youth?
In hyperinflation-hit countries like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, BTC and stablecoins have become de facto "shadow financial systems"; hundreds of millions without access to banking now hold global digital assets for the first time; humanity now possesses globally accessible assets under self-custody; international payments no longer require banks; tens of billions can now access a shared financial system; financial infrastructure is beginning to transcend national borders; and assets that don’t rely on violence or power are gaining global recognition…
For a high-inflation country, a stable, non-devaluing currency is like Noah’s Ark. That’s why stablecoins account for 61.8% of crypto trading volume in Argentina. For freelancers, digital nomads, and affluent individuals with overseas operations, USDT is their digital dollar.
Compared to hiding dollars under a mattress or risking black-market currency exchanges, clicking a mouse to convert pesos into USDT is far more elegant and secure.
Whether it’s street vendors conducting cash transactions or elite classes transferring USDT, both are fundamentally acts of distrust toward state-backed currency and efforts to protect private property. In countries with high taxes, low welfare, and constantly depreciating currencies, every "gray-market transaction" is a quiet resistance against systemic expropriation.
Over the past century, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires has seen wave after wave of new leaders, and peso banknotes have been replaced time and again. Yet ordinary people, through underground markets and gray-market ingenuity, have stubbornly carved paths through dead ends. [Related reading: Underground Argentina: Jewish loan shops, Chinese supermarkets, disillusioned youth, and the re-poorified middle class]
Nearly all of the world’s top 20 investment funds have established Web3 divisions; TradFi institutions keep pouring in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); national digital currency systems are using Bitcoin as a reference; U.S. digital asset ETFs continue breaking records in capital inflows; within just 15 years, Bitcoin has already entered the ranks of the world’s top ten financial assets…
Despite bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, certain facts have already taken place. These changes have genuinely shifted the world, bit by bit. And we are standing within an industry that will continue reshaping global financial structures.
Have we really left nothing behind?
Many still ask: "What if, 15 years from now, all these chains are gone, all these projects vanished, all these protocols replaced by more advanced infrastructure? Won’t we have just wasted our youth?"
But consider another industry: the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, NASDAQ plunged 78%; in 1995, Amazon was mocked as "just a website for selling books"; in 1998, Google was considered "worse than Yahoo"; in 2006, social networks were dismissed as "teen rebellion."
The early internet was full of: thousands of failed startups; innovations that completely disappeared; massive investments lost entirely; and tens of thousands who thought they’d wasted their lives.
Early BBS systems, portals, dial-up internet, paid email services—almost none exist today. Over 90% of first-generation mobile internet products didn’t survive. But they weren’t "wasted"—they formed the soil of the mobile era.
They built foundational infrastructure: browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers—enabling everything that came later: Facebook, Google, Apple, mobile internet, cloud computing, AI. The history of social networks is a cycle of constant fragmentation—today’s TikTok is built upon the corpses of countless dead social platforms.
Each generation replaces the one before, but no generation was in vain.
No foundational tech industry has ever progressed cleanly, linearly, clearly, correctly, with clear answers from the start. Every one has endured chaos, bubbles, trial and error, and misunderstanding—until they changed the world.
Crypto is no different.
Crypto’s technological revolution was never meant to be completed by a single generation. Everything we’re doing—even if ETH is someday replaced by another chain, L2s rewritten by new architectures, and every DEX we use today disappears—will not be in vain.
Because we are providing the foundational soil, the trials, the parameters, the social experiments, the path dependencies, the experiences and data that future generations will absorb. We are not creating the endgame—we are creating the conditions for it.
And besides, you’re not alone in holding on.
Across the world, millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders continue pushing this era forward, slowly but steadily. We are with you.
—To those who remain on this path.$BTC $ETH