Eight Years in Crypto: Finding Purpose Beyond the Speculation

Ken Chang’s recent article declaring he wasted eight years in the cryptocurrency industry touched a nerve across the sector. His core argument is damning: crypto promised to decentralize finance, but instead became a high-stakes gambling arena—a “casino” operating 24/7 with global participation, merely replicating the extractive mechanisms of traditional finance.

His frustration is understandable. After years building Ribbon Finance (a protocol enabling yield generation through systematic options selling), Chang confronted an uncomfortable truth: the infrastructure he built served speculation more than revolution. The realization forced a reckoning—was he architecting tomorrow’s financial system, or merely constructing another layer in humanity’s oldest vice?

The Pattern of Disillusionment

Chang’s exit narrative echoes Mike Hearn’s 2014 bitcoin critique, written when the protocol was supposedly failing. Both authors identified the same betrayal: a technology that promised liberation from centralized control had become concentrated and compromised. The mechanism shifted, but the outcome remained unchanged—centralization persisted, just in new clothing.

The recurring tragedy:

• Idealistic founders enter with decentralization dreams
• Capital floods in, chasing ROI not revolution
• Incentives align around speculation rather than utility
• Projects proliferate not from necessity but because venture dollars fund them
• Disillusionment follows realization

This cycle repeats because the economic model rewards it. VCs function as capital conduits—they deploy what limited partners will tolerate. When markets incentivize perpetual futures, spot DEXs, prediction markets, and meme coin launchpads, those products emerge regardless of whether the world actually needs them. Ken is right to identify this dynamic, though not entirely wrong to participate.

Five Purposes—And How Many Succeeded

To evaluate whether crypto “failed,” we must first clarify what it attempted:

Restoring sound money: Bitcoin’s original mandate. Fifteen years in, it has become a significant monetary asset and competitive pressure on sovereign currencies—though not the revolution early adopters envisioned. The gap between expectation (global replacement of fiat) and reality (digital gold asset held by institutions and wealthy individuals) remains vast.

Encoding business logic: Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum vision—digitizing all contracts into code. This succeeded narrowly: derivatives trading on-chain works well. General-purpose smart contracts? Less so. The infrastructure exists; the product-market fit remains elusive.

Establishing digital property rights: The “Web3” thesis promised true ownership of digital identities and assets. NFTs became JPG speculation. Web3 social networks failed repeatedly. Yet the underlying problem—online users lack genuine sovereignty over their digital identities—remains real and unsolved. The timing for solutions isn’t right yet, but the diagnosis is correct.

Modernizing capital markets: Unsexy but consequential. SWIFT, COBOL, and settlement windows are outdated infrastructure processing trillions daily. Replacing core financial systems requires external innovation from completely new architectures. Efficiency gains and consumer surplus will eventually materialize, just without the drama of revolution.

Enabling financial inclusion: This remains the most defensible win. Billions now access financial infrastructure through stablecoins and self-custody. Emerging markets where traditional banking proved inaccessible now have alternatives. It’s real, measurable, and provides genuine value outside wealthy nations.

Score: Two clear wins, two partial successes, one failed completely. That’s not nothing.

The Arithmetic of Pragmatic Nihilism

So is Ken right? Are crypto idealists delusional? The honest answer resists binary framing.

Speculation, mania, and capital misallocation are not separate from blockchain development—they’re baked into permissionless systems. You cannot build capital markets on open rails without attracting gambling. That’s not a bug to fix; it’s an architectural feature. The costs are real: financial nihilism normalized among young people, pointless token issuance, destroyed wealth. These deserve acknowledgment, not dismissal.

But dismiss the entire enterprise? That requires ignoring what actually works: Bitcoin has survived 15 years of predictions about its imminent collapse. Stablecoins process significant remittance volume. DEXs moved billions in legitimate trading volume while removing intermediaries. Prediction markets revealed information traditional markets missed.

The uncomfortable middle ground: Crypto is simultaneously both a speculation machine AND a technology with genuine utility applications. These aren’t contradictory—they’re symbiotic. Excessive capital inflow funds infrastructure development; much of that capital gets destroyed through speculation; the surviving infrastructure proves useful. It’s inefficient, painful, and impossible to morally justify to those harmed by speculation, yet functionally it’s how permissionless systems bootstrap.

What remains is an optimistic nihilism—maintaining hope rooted in realistic possibilities rather than ideological fantasies. Not the libertarian utopia of 2013 rhetoric, but something more humble: a network of tools providing actual value to actual people, alongside wasteful excesses that serve no one.

The Choice Remains Yours

Eight years in crypto doesn’t have to mean eight wasted years. It depends on what you were building and why.

If you entered believing decentralization would spontaneously generate a better world, disillusionment is earned. The world will not suddenly embrace Bitcoin. NFTs did not revolutionize digital ownership. Authoritarian regimes did not fall because citizens held wallets.

But if you understand crypto as a set of experimental tools with specific applications—some working, many not—then participation makes sense. The real challenge isn’t maintaining blind optimism; it’s sustaining conviction based on actual evidence rather than prophecy.

The blockchain world needs fewer true believers and more pragmatists willing to abandon failed ideas while defending genuine ones. Ken’s reflections matter not because his conclusions are correct, but because they demand the field reckon with what actually works versus what we simply hoped might work.

That distinction separates wisdom from denial. Choose accordingly.