If you have been in the crypto industry for the past few years, you must have felt that growing sense of "burnout."

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

This is not just the state of one person, but a collective fatigue among industry professionals. Ken articulated a truth that many dare not admit: in the crypto industry, it is indeed very easy to lose track of time.

Nothing Comes from Nowhere

You might have stayed up late for airdrops, monitored the market for launches, chased narratives for profit, researched a new protocol all night, or participated in countless unpaid labor for community governance. From the romanticism of liberalism, to experiments in on-chain governance, to today’s meme, perpetual, and gambling tracks, all of this is enough to make one doubt: are we really participating in a technological revolution, or are we just working for an infinitely greedy casino?

The doubts of practitioners do not stem from a lack of conviction, but from the brutal structure of the crypto industry itself: the narrative lifecycle is shorter than the product lifecycle; hype outweighs fundamentals; speculation moves much faster than construction; hero worship coexists with collective skepticism; and for many projects, the endgame is not failure, but disappearance.

It must be said honestly that Ken's feelings are shared by many. And these doubts are not unfounded.

"What exactly are we holding on to?" The weight of this question may be far heavier 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 some star KOL? Certainly not. Are we believing in individual narratives? That’s even less likely.

Many people suddenly realize: what they have truly believed in all along may only be one thing: we are still holding on to and believing in the significance of crypto for this world.

Therefore, right 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 crypto for this world? Nic Carter provided his five points: making the monetary system more robust, encoding business logic with smart contracts, making digital property real, improving capital market efficiency, and expanding global financial inclusion.

Don't Forget Why We Started

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

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

In 2008, during the financial crisis, banks collapsed, and Lehman Brothers crumbled. 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 monetary system that does not rely on any centralized institution?"

For the first time in history, 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 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, do not believe in it, or even attack it, but no one can change it.

Water does not compete, but benefits all things.

With global inflation becoming the norm, high sovereign debt, an asset shortage after long-term declines in risk-free interest rates, financial oppression, and a lack of privacy… the existence of these problems makes the vision of the crypto industry not outdated, but even more urgent. As Nic Carter said: "I have never seen a technology that can drive the upgrade of capital market infrastructure more than crypto."

Why This Is Not a Failed Industry

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

In countries with hyperinflation like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, BTC and stablecoins have become, in practical terms, a "shadow financial system"; hundreds of millions of people who could not access the banking system now own global digital assets for the first time; humanity has the ability to control global assets independently for the first time; international payments no longer require banks; 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 beginning to gain global recognition…

For a high-inflation country, a stable currency that does not depreciate is like a 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 is their digital dollar.

Compared to hiding dollars under a mattress or risking black market currency exchange, clicking a mouse to convert pesos to USDT seems much more elegant and secure.

Whether it’s cash transactions by street vendors or USDT transfers by the elite, they are essentially expressions of distrust in national credit and a means of protecting private property. In a country with high taxes, low welfare, and continuously depreciating currency, every "gray transaction" is a rebellion against institutional plunder.

For a hundred years, the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires has changed hands repeatedly, and the peso has been devalued time and again. But the common people, relying on underground transactions and gray wisdom, have managed to find a way out of a dead end. Related reading: "Underground Argentina: Jewish Money Houses, Chinese Supermarkets, Disillusioned Youth, and the Declining Middle Class."

The top 20 global funds have almost all established Web3 departments; TradFi institutions continue to pour in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); national digital currency systems reference Bitcoin; digital asset ETFs across the U.S. are breaking new records for capital inflows; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has jumped into the top ten global financial assets…

Even with bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, some facts have already occurred. These changes have genuinely altered the world. And we stand in an industry that may change the global financial structure.

Have we really left nothing behind?

Many still ask: "If 15 years from now, all these chains are gone, projects are gone, and protocols have been replaced by more advanced infrastructures, then aren’t we just wasting our youth now?"

Let’s look at another industry: in 2000, the internet bubble burst, and the NASDAQ plummeted by 78%; in 1995, Amazon was criticized as "just a book-selling website"; in 1998, Google was considered "not as good as Yahoo"; in 2006, social networks were seen as "teenage rebellion."

The early internet was filled with: thousands of dead startups; completely vanished innovations; massive investments that went to waste; and tens of thousands who thought they wasted their youth.

Early BBS, portals, dial-up internet, and paid email services have almost all disappeared today, and 90% of the first-generation mobile internet products did not survive. But they were by no means "wasted"; they formed the soil of the mobile era.

The infrastructure they created: browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers, enabled: Facebook, Google, Apple, the mobile internet, cloud computing, and the entire foundation of AI. The history of social networks is a constantly fragmented cycle, just as today’s TikTok is composed of countless deceased social networks.

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

No industry has walked a clean, linear, clear, correct path with obvious answers. 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 in the crypto industry has never been completed by a single generation. Everything we do, even if ETH is replaced by other chains, L2s are rewritten with new architectures, and all the DEXs we use today disappear, will never be in vain.

Because what we provide is foundational soil, trial and error, parameters, social experiments, path dependence, and experiences and samples absorbed by the future. And not the endgame itself.

Moreover, you are not alone in your persistence.

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

— Written for those who still remain on this path.

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