I Wasted 8 Years in Crypto: A Disillusioned Builder Reflects on the Industry’s Casino Reality

I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in Crypto

Initial Motivations

I was a politically motivated person when I was a teenager. Of all the books that radicalized me, it was the Aynd Rand books (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) that did. In 2016, I donated to Gary Johnson as a starry-eyed libertarian. On top of being a staunch Randian, I was into computer programming, so crypto was a natural fit for me. The cypherpunk ethos attracted me. I was enamored by the whole idea of Bitcoin being a private bank for wealthy individuals. Being able to walk across the border with a billion dollars in your head is and always will be a powerful idea to me.

Over time however, I felt like I have lost my purpose in crypto. The initial siren songs of crypto’s transformative powers waned after working in the space full-time. I was disillusioned by my target customers and who I was really building for. I completely misunderstood what the actual users of crypto are v.s. just propaganda. Crypto purports that it helps decentralize the financial system, which I completely bought into, but in reality, it’s just a speculation and a gambling hyper-system that’s really just a mirror of what the economy is now.

The reality hit me like a fucking truck. I am NOT building a new financial system. I built a casino. A casino that does not call itself a casino, but it is the biggest, online, multi-player 24/7 casino our generation has ever concocted. Some part of me wants me to feel proud that I contributed at least my 20s building this casino out. Another part of me literally feels like I wasted my entire 20s in this space. I wasted my life on this, but at least I made good money from it.

Look at what they do, not what they say

Crypto is confusing. On one hand, you have propagandists that say that they want to completely replace the financial system to one that exists on the blockchain. I could easily imagine such a system - your bank account would just hold USDC or Bitcoin, and you could send a billion dollars to anyone in the world in a few seconds. That belief is powerful and I still ascribe to it.

BUT the incentives have completely warped what happens in reality. In the real world, every market participant was happy to put their money into funding the next Layer 1 (Aptos, Sui, Sei, ICP etc). The outcome of the past L1 wars in 2020 was there was one winner - Solana. This led to a strong incentive for picking the fourth place (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, ??). This incentive has propped up 100s of billions of dollars of market caps. Did this create a net progression towards a new, ideal financial system? Despite the 5000 word essays VCs write, no, it has not contributed to creating a new system. In fact, it literally torched everyone’s money (both retail and VC alike) so everyone has less money in the new financial system.

I am not just picking on L1s specifically. I could go on and on with many examples like this in crypto - spot DEXs, perp DEXs, prediction markets, meme coin platforms etc. Mania and competition in these market segments don’t positively contribute to the end goal of a better financial system. Contrary to what VCs say, we do not need to build the Casino on Mars.

Gamblification of the economy

It would be a lie for me to say that I joined crypto without any financial motivation. As a reader, it may sound hypocritical to you that I decided to swear off the crypto industry, now that I have made enough money. Yes, maybe I am hypocritical. But maybe I also just feel sick about contributing to the cesspool of financialization and gamblification of the economy.

The normalization of making a quick buck from one another in a zero sum way is not how wealth is made long term. It may seem like it is, but it really isn’t. Being in crypto for 8 years have completely fucked with my ability to identify what is a sustainable business. In crypto, you don’t need a successful business or product to make money. Crypto as an industry has a long tail of high market cap coins, which have zero users.

That is not how the real world works. If you want to actually bring value to your customers in a way that isn’t just gambling + entertainment (which is what casinos do btw), these zero sum ways of doing business are just not it.

Conclusion

I used to think financial nihilism is a cute and innocent concept. And that it’s fine to keep introducing and re-introducing zero sum games for the next generation to play. I have zero doubt that BTC will hit $1m one day. But that is irrelevant to the financial games the industry is churning out.

This industry mentality is incredibly toxic, and I believe it will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility for the younger generation. You already see this happening in real time, and I think it’s really up to us to find the courage in ourselves to resist the pull of worthless games.

CMS holdings had the best quote ever: “Do you want to make money, or do you want to be right?”. I choose to be right this time.