You should also believe in Crypto

If you have been in the encryption industry for the past few years, you must have felt the increasing sense of “burnout.”

Last weekend, the long article by Aevo co-founder Ken Chan undoubtedly struck a chord with many people. He used an extreme title - “I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in the Encryption Industry.”

This is not an individual's state, but a collective fatigue of industry professionals. Ken wrote the truth that many dare not admit: in the encryption industry, it is really easy to lose track of time.

Nothing happens without reason.

You may have stayed up late for airdrops, monitored the market for listings, chased trends and made trades for narratives, researched a new protocol all night, and participated in community governance with countless unpaid labor. From the romantic liberalism, to the on-chain autonomy experiments, and now to the rapid decline of meme, perpetual, and speculative racing tracks, all of this is indeed enough to make one doubt whether we are truly participating in a technological revolution or just working for an infinitely greedy casino.

The skepticism of practitioners is not due to their lack of conviction, but rather because of the brutal structure of the encryption industry: the narrative lifecycle is shorter than the product lifecycle; hype outweighs fundamentals; the speed of speculation far exceeds the speed of construction; hero worship coexists with collective doubt; and the end for many projects is not failure, but disappearance.

It must be said honestly that Ken's feelings are something many people have experienced. And these doubts are not without reason.

“What exactly are we holding on to?” The weight of this question may be far heavier than “Will the price of Bitcoin rise again?”

So when we say “we believe in encryption”, what exactly are we believing in? Are we believing in the project team? No. Are we believing in a certain celebrity KOL? Of course not. Are we believing in narratives? That is even less likely.

Many people suddenly realize: the only thing they have truly believed in all along is likely just one thing: what we continue to uphold and believe in is the significance of encryption for this world.

Therefore, shortly after Ken's article went viral, Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, quickly wrote another response article titled “I Don't Regret Spending Eight Years in the Encryption Industry.”

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

Don't forget why we set out.

Whenever the industry falls into chaos, perhaps we can reread the Bitcoin white paper.

A peer-to-peer electronic cash system, this is the first sentence of the white paper.

In 2008, the financial crisis, banks collapsed, Lehman Brothers fell apart. Financiers and politicians made the whole 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 monetary system that does not rely on any centralized institution?”

This is the first time in history that humanity has a currency that does 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 very 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 tomorrow. There will always be people who dislike it, who don't believe in it, or even attack it, but no one can change it.

Water does not compete, but benefits all things.

The normalization of global inflation, high sovereign debt, an asset shortage following a long-term decline in risk-free interest rates, financial oppression, and privacy loss… The existence of these issues makes the vision of the encryption industry not outdated, but rather more urgent. As Nic Carter said: “I have never seen a technology that can drive the upgrade of capital market infrastructure better than encryption.”

Why is this not a failing industry?

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

In countries with hyperinflation such as Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, BTC and stablecoins have become a de facto “shadow financial system”; hundreds of millions of people who cannot access the banking system now have global digital assets for the first time; humanity has ownership of global assets that can be independently controlled for the first time; international payments no longer require banks for the first time; billions of people can access the same financial system for the first time; financial infrastructure is beginning to transcend national borders; an asset that does not rely on violence and power is starting to gain global recognition…

For a high-inflation country, a stable currency that does not devalue is like a Noah's Ark, which is why stablecoins account for 61.8% of Argentina's cryptocurrency trading volume. For freelancers, digital nomads, and the affluent class with overseas businesses, USDT is their digital dollar.

Compared to hiding dollars under the mattress or taking the risk of exchanging currency on the black market, clicking a mouse to convert pesos to USDT seems much more elegant and safe.

Whether it is the cash transactions of street vendors or the USDT transfers of the elite class, they fundamentally reflect a distrust in national credit and a protection of private property. In a country with high taxes, low welfare, and continuously depreciating currency, every “gray transaction” is a rebellion against systemic plunder.

For a hundred years, the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires has changed hands time and again, while the peso has lost value with each passing note. Yet, the common people have found a way out of this dead end through underground transactions and gray wisdom. Related reading: “Underground Argentina: Jewish Moneylenders, Chinese Supermarkets, Disillusioned Youth, and the Middle Class Falling Back into Poverty”

Almost all of the top 20 funds worldwide have established Web3 departments; TradFi institutions continue to pour in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); the national digital currency systems refer to Bitcoin; digital asset ETFs across the United States are setting new records for capital inflows; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has already risen to be among the top ten financial assets globally…

Even with bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, some facts have already occurred. These changes have genuinely altered the world in some small ways. And we are standing in an industry that will continue to change the global financial structure.

Have we really left nothing behind?

Many people still ask: “If in 15 years, all these chains are gone, the projects are gone, and the protocols have been replaced by more advanced infrastructure. Isn't what we are doing now just a waste of youth?”

Now let's look at another industry: In 2000, the internet bubble burst, and the NASDAQ plummeted by 78%; in 1995, Amazon was also criticized as a “book-selling website”; in 1998, Google was considered “not as useful as Yahoo”; in 2006, social networks were deemed as “teen rebellion.”

The early days of the Internet were filled with: thousands of failed startups; completely vanished innovations; massive investments that went down the drain; and tens of thousands of people who felt they had wasted their youth.

Early BBS, portals, dial-up internet, and paid email services have almost disappeared today, and 90% of the first-generation mobile internet products did not survive. However, they were by no means a “waste”; they constituted the soil of the mobile era.

The infrastructure they created: browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers, has led to the foundation of: Facebook, Google, Apple, mobile internet, cloud computing, and AI. The development history of social networks is a continuously broken cycle, just like today’s TikTok is composed of countless dead social networks.

Each generation replaces the previous one, but no generation is in vain.

No industry has come this far without being dirty, linear, clear-cut, correct, or having clear answers. All foundational technology industries have experienced chaos, bubbles, trial and error, and misunderstandings until they changed the world.

The encryption industry is the same.

The technological revolution in the encryption industry has never been completed by a single generation. Everything we do today, even if ETH is replaced by other chains in the future, L2 is rewritten with new architectures, and all the DEX we use today disappear, will never be in vain.

Because what we provide is the basic soil, it is trial and error, it is parameters, it is social experiments, it is path dependency, it is experiences and samples absorbed by the future. And not the end itself.

Moreover, you are not alone in your persistence.

Millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders around the world are still driving this era slowly forward. We are with you.

——For those who are still on this path.

**$BB **$KMNO **$AVAIL **