You Should Also Believe in <strong>Crypto</strong>

If you have been in the crypto industry for the past few years, you must have felt the increasingly strong sense of "fatigue."

During the last weekend, Aevo co-founder Ken Chan's lengthy article undoubtedly struck a chord with many. He used an extreme title — "I've Wasted 8 Years of My Life in the Crypto Industry."

This is not an individual's state but the collective fatigue of industry participants. Ken wrote about many truths that many dare not admit: in the crypto industry, it is indeed easy to lose a sense of time.

Nothing Happens Without Reason

You may have stayed up all night for an airdrop, watched the charts for a project launch, chased pumps and dumps for a narrative, researched a new protocol all night, or engaged in countless uncompensated labor for community governance. From the romantic liberalism to the on-chain governance experiment, and now to today's meme, perpetuals, and the frenzy of the degenerate race, it is enough to make one wonder: are we really participating in a technological revolution, or are we working for an infinitely greedy casino?

The skepticism of practitioners is not because they are not firm enough but because of the crypto industry's cruel structure itself: narrative life cycles are shorter than product life cycles; hype outweighs fundamentals; speculation speed far exceeds development speed; hero worship coexists with collective doubt; the endgame of many projects is not failure but disappearance.

It must be frankly said that Ken's feelings are experienced by many. And these doubts are not groundless.

The weight of the question "What are we really holding on to?" may be far greater than "Will Bitcoin's price rise again?"

So when we say "we believe in crypto," what exactly are we believing in? Are we believing in the project teams? No. Are we believing in a celebrity KOL? Certainly not. Are we believing in a series of narratives? Even less likely.

Many people will suddenly realize that the only thing they have truly believed in all along is likely just one thing: what we are still holding on to 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, quickly wrote another response article — "I Don't Regret Spending Eight Years in the Crypto Industry."

What is the significance of cryptocurrency to this world? Nic Carter provided his five points of view: making the monetary system more robust, encoding business logic with smart contracts, making digital property real, enhancing capital market efficiency, and expanding global financial inclusion.

Never Forget Why We Started

Whenever the industry is in chaos, perhaps we can reread the Bitcoin whitepaper.

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, the first sentence of the whitepaper states.

In 2008, the financial crisis, bank failures, the thunderous collapse of Lehman Brothers. Financiers and politicians made the entire world pay for their risks and mistakes.

The birth of Bitcoin was not to create wealth but to answer a question: "Can we establish a currency system that does not rely on any centralized institution?"

For the first time in history, humanity had a currency that did not require trust in anyone. It is the only financial system in the world that truly does not belong to any country, company, or individual. You can criticize ETH, criticize Solana, criticize all L2s, criticize all DEXs, but few will 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 transaction tomorrow. There will always be people who dislike it, do not believe in it, or even attack it, but no one can change it.

Water is unpretentious, yet it benefits all things.

The normalization of global inflation, soaring sovereign debt, prolonged decline in risk-free rates leading to asset shortages, financial oppression, lack of privacy... The presence of these issues means that the vision of the cryptocurrency industry is not outdated but rather more urgent. As Nic Carter said, "I have never seen a technology more capable of driving the upgrade of capital market infrastructure than cryptocurrency."

Why This Is Not a Failed Industry

Ken said he wasted eight years. But did we really waste our youth?

In hyperinflationary countries such as Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, BTC and stablecoins have become a practical "shadow financial system"; hundreds of millions of people who cannot access the banking system have for the first time owned global digital assets; humanity has, for the first time, globally owned assets that can be self-managed; international payments no longer require banks for the first time; billions of people are for the first time exposed to the same financial system; financial infrastructure is beginning to transcend national borders; an asset that does not rely on violence and power is starting to be recognized globally...

For a high-inflation country, a stable and non-depreciating currency is like a Noah's Ark, so stablecoins account for 61.8% of Argentina's crypto transaction volume. For freelancers with overseas businesses, digital nomads, and the wealthy, USDT is their digital dollar.

Compared to keeping dollars under the mattress or risking exchanging currency on the black market, clicking a mouse to convert pesos to USDT seems more elegant and secure.

Whether it's a cash transaction with a street vendor or a USDT transfer among the elite, it fundamentally reflects a lack of trust in the country's credit and a desire to protect private property. In a high-tax, low-welfare, continuously depreciating currency country, every "gray transaction" is a resistance against systemic plunder.

For a hundred years, the Pink House in Buenos Aires has seen a succession of owners, and the peso has undergone devaluation after devaluation. But relying on underground transactions and gray wisdom, the common people have managed to find a way out of the dead end. Related reading: "Underground Argentina: Jewish Moneylenders, Chinese Supermarkets, Laid-back Youth, and Reverting Middle Class"

Almost all of the top 20 global funds have established Web3 divisions; TradFi institutions continue to pour in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); national digital currency systems are referencing Bitcoin; all of America's digital asset ETFs are setting new records for inflows; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has risen to become one of the top ten financial assets globally...

Despite bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, some facts have indeed occurred. These changes have subtly altered the world. And we stand in an industry that will continue to reshape the global financial structure.

Have we really left nothing behind?

Many people still ask: "If in 15 years, none of these chains are left, projects are gone, protocols are replaced by more advanced infrastructure. Aren't we just wasting our youth on what we're doing now?"

But consider another industry: in 2000, the Internet bubble burst, and the NASDAQ plummeted by 78%; in 1995, Amazon was called "a website that sells books"; in 1998, Google was considered "less user-friendly than Yahoo"; in 2006, social networks were seen as "teenage rebellion."

The early days of the Internet were filled with: thousands of dead startup companies; vanished innovations; massive investments gone awry; tens of thousands of people thinking they wasted their youth.

Early BBSs, portals, dial-up internet, and paid email services have almost disappeared today, and 90% of first-generation mobile internet products have not survived. But they are by no means "wasted"; they formed the foundation of the mobile era.

The infrastructure they created—the browser, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers—achieved everything: Facebook, Google, Apple, mobile internet, cloud computing, AI. The development history of social networks is a constantly shattered cycle, just as TikTok today is composed of countless deceased social networks.

Each generation replaces the previous one, but no generation is futile.

No industry has a clean, linear, clear, correct, or definitive path. All foundational technology industries have experienced chaos, bubbles, trial and error, and misunderstanding until they changed the world.

The crypto industry is no different.

The technological revolution of the crypto industry has never been completed by a single generation. Everything we do, even if ETH is replaced by another chain in the future, L2 is rewritten with a new architecture, and the DEXs we use today all disappear, will never be in vain.

Because what we provide is the foundational soil, the trial and error, the parameters, the social experiment, the path dependence, the experience and samples absorbed by the future—not the final destination itself.

Moreover, you are not alone in persisting.

There are still millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders worldwide who are slowly pushing forward in this era. We are with you.

—Written for those who are still on this road.