The secret battle among the five factions of cryptocurrency: the eternal tug-of-war between ideals and reality, who will ultimately come out on top?

The crypto world is experiencing an identity crisis. The lengthy article “I wasted 8 years of my life in crypto” by Aevo co-founder Ken Chang caused a huge stir, as he straightforwardly stated that crypto has fallen from a dream to the world’s largest casino. This is not an isolated case—Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter analyzed in depth and found that the root of the problem does not lie in the technology itself, but in the fact that this field has never been a single narrative. Instead, it is a fierce collision of interests and beliefs among multiple factions.

The Shattered Truth of Ideals: Five Major Factions Each Fighting Their Own Battle

The chaos within the crypto community stems from fundamental disagreements over “what cryptocurrency should become.” Nic Carter systematically organized five different faction goals, each pursuing their own path, sometimes cooperating, more often hindering each other.

First Faction: The Obsessive Believers in Sound Money

Bitcoin fundamentalists still hold onto their original ideals, believing BTC can compete with or even replace sovereign currencies. Over 15 years, Bitcoin has indeed become an important store of value, but it is still far from a true monetary revolution. This faction swings between hope and disappointment.

Second Faction: The Techies Who Code to Change the World

Led by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, this camp advocates embedding financial logic, business contracts, and other rules into smart contracts, improving efficiency through code transparency. The explosive growth of DeFi derivatives proves this path is feasible, but it also exposes another issue— the grand vision of “rewriting the economic order” now seems too distant.

Third Faction: The Romantics of Digital Ownership

NFT and decentralized social advocates dream of making digital assets truly owned like physical property, but they face merciless market ridicule. Nic Carter admits that the original intention behind this idea was good, just that the timing was not right—perhaps it will take ten years to see the true value of this path.

Fourth Faction: The Most Pragmatic Traditional Financial Reformers

This group has no cyberpunk romanticism; they only care about how blockchain can improve the efficiency of financial settlement. Although not glamorous, they hold the most commercial potential and are the most steadily advancing field. Ironically, the most powerful applications are precisely the ones the crypto community is least enthusiastic to discuss.

Fifth Faction: The Opportunists of Financial Inclusion

From stablecoins and custodial wallets to tokenized assets, this faction is dedicated to providing equal access to the global financial system for underserved regions. Nic believes this is currently the most successful area of crypto development and a severely underestimated vision.

The Inevitable Conflict of Factions: Bubbles and Revolutions Are Twin Brothers

Why do so many factions exist? Nic Carter points out that this fundamentally reflects the crypto community’s core disagreement over “what is important.” When these five factions tell their own stories, they inevitably consume each other and undermine one another.

Meme speculation culture, casino-style contracts, the proliferation of new L1s—these phenomena seem like crypto’s decline, but in reality, they are the inevitable costs of expanding technological infrastructure. Just like any great technological revolution, bubbles accompany crypto too. Ken Chang’s fatigue stems from this—he hopes for a pure revolution but is forced to witness the chaos of reality.

From Utopia to Pragmatism: The True Direction of Crypto

Nic finally offers his answer: abandon the pursuit of a perfect single narrative and instead embrace pragmatic progress.

The current crypto applications are already quite clear: Bitcoin is becoming a globally significant asset; Stablecoins have become the de facto standard for cross-border payments and savings; DEXs and prediction markets are forming truly product-market-fit innovations. While these achievements are less exciting than early grand narratives, they represent sustainable, quantifiable deep infrastructure progress.

What does the five factions of cryptocurrency ultimately prove? It’s not that one faction is right, but that the entire industry is gradually clarifying the truly feasible path through competition and collision among factions. The revolution has not arrived on schedule, but the infrastructure is quietly rising.

Rational optimism may be the clearest attitude to face the future of crypto.