Cryptocurrency is not a waste of youth but an infrastructure experiment of the era

In the past few years, the cryptocurrency industry has been filled with a sense of collective fatigue. Aevo co-founder Ken Chan’s recent article titled “I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in the Cryptocurrency Industry” struck a chord with many. This is not an individual dilemma but a shared spiritual struggle faced by industry participants.

The Real Dilemma of the Industry

It is important to acknowledge: there are indeed some structural issues within the cryptocurrency industry.

You may stay up all night for airdrops, monitor price charts for project launches, chase pump-and-dump cycles of hot trends, study new protocols overnight, or even work countless unpaid hours to maintain community governance. From liberal romanticism to on-chain governance experiments, from today’s meme culture to the狂竞赛 of perpetual contracts, all of this can lead one to question: are we truly participating in a technological revolution, or are we just working for an infinitely greedy casino?

Professionals’ doubts are not due to a lack of resolve but stem from the harsh reality of the industry itself: the lifecycle of narratives is shorter than that of products; hype always overshadows fundamentals; speculation outpaces development; hero worship coexists with collective skepticism; most projects do not fail but quietly fade away.

Ken’s feelings are not isolated. When the weight of the question “What exactly are we grasping?” surpasses “Will Bitcoin’s price rise again?”, we need to reevaluate: What is our faith in cryptocurrency really about?

Is it faith in the project teams? No. Is it admiration for certain KOLs? Of course not. Is it superstition about a series of narratives? Even less so. Many people are gradually realizing that the only thing they truly believe in is the significance of cryptocurrency itself for this world.

Redefining the Value of This Industry

After Ken’s article resonated widely, Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, quickly responded with “I Don’t Regret Spending Eight Years in Cryptocurrency.” He proposed five core value propositions:

• Building a more resilient monetary system
• Coding business logic through smart contracts
• Making digital ownership a reality
• Improving capital market efficiency
• Expanding global financial inclusion

These five points touch on the essence of the industry. Whenever the industry falls into chaos, perhaps we should revisit the opening of the Bitcoin white paper—a purely peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

In 2008, the financial crisis erupted, banks collapsed, and Lehman Brothers fell. Financiers and politicians shifted their risks and mistakes onto the entire world. Bitcoin was not created to generate wealth but to answer a fundamental question: Can we establish a monetary system that does not rely on any central authority?

For the first time in history, humanity gained a form of currency that requires no 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 Ethereum, criticize Solana, criticize all Layer 2s and DEXs, but few will criticize Bitcoin because its original purpose has never changed. Any Web2 company can shut down your account tomorrow, but no one can stop you from sending a Bitcoin transaction tomorrow. There will always be those who dislike it, distrust it, or even attack it, but no one can change it.

Water flows silently, yet it nourishes all things. As global inflation normalizes, sovereign debt soars, long-term risk-free rates decline leading to asset shortages, financial repression persists, and privacy issues remain, the vision of cryptocurrency has not become outdated—in fact, it has become more urgent.

This Is Not a Failed Industry

Ken says he wasted eight years, but did we really waste our youth? Look at what has actually happened:

In high-inflation countries like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, Bitcoin and stablecoins have become the real “shadow financial system.” Hundreds of millions of people who cannot access traditional banking systems have, for the first time, global digital assets. Humanity has, for the first time, assets that can be self-custodied worldwide. International payments no longer require bank intermediaries. Billions of people are exposed to the same financial system for the first time. Financial infrastructure is beginning to transcend borders. An asset not based on violence or power has gained global recognition.

For high-inflation countries, a stable and non-depreciating currency is like Noah’s Ark, which is why stablecoins account for 61.8% of Argentina’s crypto trading volume. For freelancers, digital nomads, and the wealthy with overseas businesses, USDT has become their digital dollar.

Compared to hiding dollars under the mattress or risking black market exchange rates, clicking to convert pesos to USDT is more elegant and safer. Whether it’s cash transactions with street vendors or USDT transfers among elites, it fundamentally reflects distrust in the country’s credit and a desire to protect private property.

In an environment of high taxes, low benefits, and ongoing currency devaluation, every “gray transaction” is a form of resistance against systemic plunder. Over the past century, Buenos Aires’ Casa Rosada has witnessed power shifts, and the peso has experienced multiple devaluations. Yet, through underground trading and gray wisdom, ordinary people have found a way out of their predicament.

Meanwhile, the top twenty funds worldwide have established Web3 divisions; traditional financial institutions are continuously entering (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are referencing Bitcoin; all US digital asset ETFs are setting new capital inflow records; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has become one of the top ten global financial assets.

Despite bubbles, speculation, chaos, and fraud, certain facts have indeed occurred. These changes have quietly transformed the world. And we are in an industry that will continue to reshape the global financial structure.

Are We Truly Gaining Nothing?

Many still ask: “If in 15 years these chains disappear, projects are gone, and protocols are replaced by more advanced infrastructure, aren’t we just wasting our youth now?”

Look at another industry from a different perspective: in 2000, during the dot-com bubble burst, NASDAQ fell by 78%; in 1995, Amazon was mocked as “just a bookstore”; in 1998, Google was considered “less useful than Yahoo”; in 2006, social networks were seen as “rebellion among teenagers.”

The early internet was filled with thousands of failed startups, vanished innovations, huge investments lost, and hundreds of thousands of people feeling they wasted their youth. The earliest BBS, portals, dial-up internet, and paid email services have almost completely disappeared today; 90% of the first-generation mobile internet products did not survive.

But these are not “wasted.” They laid the foundation for the mobile era. The infrastructure they created—browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers—made everything possible: Facebook, Google, Apple, mobile internet, cloud computing, artificial intelligence.

The history of social networks is a cycle of continuous fragmentation, just like today’s TikTok is composed of countless dead social networks. Each generation replaces the previous one, but no generation is useless.

No industry’s development path is clean, linear, clear, correct, or final. All foundational tech industries have experienced chaos, bubbles, trial and error, and misunderstandings before they changed the world. The same applies to the cryptocurrency industry.

The technological revolution of cryptocurrency has never been accomplished by a single generation. Everything we do—even if Ethereum is replaced by another chain in the future, Layer 2s are restructured, or the DEXs we use today disappear—will never be in vain. Because what we provide is the foundational soil, experiments, parameters, social experiments, path dependence, experience, and samples for the future—not the final destination itself.

And you are not alone. Millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders around the world are slowly advancing this era. We walk with you.

—Dedicated to those still on this path.