After experiencing multiple rounds of bull and bear markets as well as narrative cycles, the cryptocurrency industry is entering a more complex stage: on one hand, it is accelerating mainstream adoption, while on the other, it continues to experience a retreat in imagination. ETFs, stablecoins, and institutional funding are making blockchain increasingly resemble a part of the financial system; yet the market's enthusiasm for "disrupting everything" has quickly faded through successive cycles. It is precisely for this reason that it may now be more appropriate than ever to re-examine the question: what exactly is blockchain?

In light of this question, we had an in-depth conversation with ViaBTC CEO Yang Haipo. As one of the early participants and builders in the cryptocurrency industry, his answer is not "new infrastructure" or "new technology," but a sharper definition: blockchain is a hardcore liberalism experiment. This experiment has been testing a timeless question for over a decade — when trust no longer relies on a center, where can freedom possibly go?

Q: After multiple cycles, many users have visibly disillusioned towards the narratives of "blockchain" and "decentralization." From today's perspective, how do you view blockchain?

To be frank, most people's understanding of blockchain was misguided from the very beginning. They thought it was like AI or cloud computing, something that can be procured by enterprises and included in government presentations as "new infrastructure." But blockchain has never been just a technology; its means is decentralization, and its goal is freedom. From a historical perspective, it is a hardcore liberalism experiment.

We all know that the 2008 global financial crisis caused part of the population to completely lose trust in the centralized financial system. Satoshi Nakamoto embedded the famous headline from The Times in the Bitcoin genesis block: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." This is certainly not just a technical detail; it is also a very distinct political expression.

However, Bitcoin did not appear out of thin air. Before it, the cypherpunk movement had been brewing for twenty years: from David Chaum's DigiCash to Wei Dai's b-money to Hal Finney's RPOW, a group of cryptographers and programmers have been attempting to achieve personal privacy and financial freedom through technological means. Nostalgia for the gold standard, Hayek's monetary competition theory, the technological accumulation of cypherpunks, and the trust collapse brought about by the financial crisis came together in 2008, coalescing into a testable proposition: replace trust with cryptography, replace institutions with protocols, and replace laws with code to see what happens.

This is actually one of the core assumptions of liberalism — can individuals self-organize, self-govern, and take responsibility without a Leviathan? And blockchain has first put this question into large-scale testing in the real world. No laboratories, no ethics committees, with a control group of a traditional financial system that has been running for hundreds of years, and the experimental subjects are real people, with real money at stake.

Moreover, there is another point that is often overlooked: blockchain is inherently financial. Decentralization is extremely expensive and inefficient, as the same piece of data must be redundantly stored and repeatedly verified by thousands of nodes across the network, reducing throughput to single digits per second. A system that is both slow and costly is not suitable for storing videos, running AI, or socializing. The fields that are truly willing to pay such a high cost for decentralization are essentially still financial, because the core of finance is trust, and the cost of trust is far higher than computing power. The Bitcoin whitepaper makes it clear: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. From the first day of its creation, this has been about money.

Q: What has this "liberalism experiment" validated in terms of results?

It has validated that the dividends and costs of freedom are both real.

First, let's talk about the dividends. One of the core capabilities of blockchain is its resistance to censorship, and this is not an abstract concept; it has been repeatedly validated by reality. In 2010, WikiLeaks was completely financially blocked; Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal all cut off its funding channels, depriving it of the ability to receive donations, and Bitcoin became the only channel that could not be blocked.

Stablecoins represent another validation on the demand side. Their importance does not lie in how beautiful their ideals are but in the fact that there are real people who need a value channel that is not so easily controlled. For Argentine families, USDT is the most convenient way to hedge against the devaluation of their local currency; for merchants in sanctioned countries, it is the only channel for accessing global trade settlements; for Afghan women, it is a means to circumvent family control and preserve personal savings.

But here lies a very critical paradox: the most successful product of this liberalism experiment is precisely built upon the premise of not being fully decentralized. USDT is centrally issued by Tether and can be frozen. In other words, the success of stablecoins is actually a compromise of the experimental hypothesis — users do not necessarily want pure decentralization; what they want is a relatively uncontrollable channel against local powers. As for whether the other end of this channel remains centralized, many do not seem to care.

Now let’s talk about the costs; freedom has never been a free lunch. The other side of this experiment is a dark forest without police, courts, or insurance companies. LUNA serves as the most typical specimen. The Anchor protocol promised an annualized return of 19.5%, while US Treasury yields were under 4% at that time. This return did not come from real economic activity, but relied on token issuance and new investor funds, essentially still the most classic Ponzi scheme, merely disguised as "algorithmic stablecoin." In three days, $40 billion evaporated. Then came Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, FTX, falling one after another.

The so-called "decentralized" industry is, in reality, highly interconnected, highly centralized, and highly fragile. SBF was sentenced to 25 years, Do Kwon 15 years, and the Celsius founder 12 years — a few of the industry's most well-known founders are collectively writing footnotes for the price of "freedom" through imprisonment.

Q: Why does such an experiment under the banner of freedom ultimately evolve into speculation, centralization, and narrative fanaticism?

Because technology can change the rules, but it cannot automatically change people. Many people have an over-inflated expectation for blockchain, as if a sufficiently decentralized underlying protocol would naturally lead to the emergence of a free order. But reality does not work that way. As long as participants are still human, the market will inevitably generate new narratives, new centers, new authorities, and rounds of emotionally driven speculation.

From altcoins, ICOs, DeFi, NFTs to MEME coins, a more apparent trend can be seen: the technological content of each narrative is decreasing, while the purity of speculation is rising, and the cycles are shortening. In some ways, MEME coins are the most honest, as they no longer disguise themselves as “technological revolutions” or “paradigm upgrades.” Those buying them are not purchasing assets, but rather a sense of participation, belonging, and an emotional experience of "I am also here."

A bull market essentially is a process where consensus is continuously amplified. Halving provided the initial spark, but what truly determines the duration of the trend is how much new capital is willing to enter the same narrative. In the past few cycles, the narratives have become lighter and the speculation faster. This also indicates that the market often trades not in true technology, but rather in narratives, identity recognition, and emotions themselves. Because of this, an experiment that originally sought to bypass centers, authorities, and institutional intermediaries will still inevitably produce new centers and new fanaticism.

Therefore, what is most worth observing about blockchain is not whether it has realized a purely ideal world, but rather that it has thoroughly exposed a fact: even on top of decentralized protocols, people will still recreate centralized beliefs and speculative structures.

Q: Where do you think this liberalism experiment of blockchain ultimately leads?

I am not pessimistic, but I also don’t believe it will transform into a "future infrastructure" covering everyone as many envision.

The demand for blockchain is real, but the ceiling is not as high as the market imagines. How many people are there who need to break through capital controls? How large is the demand for anonymous transactions? What percentage of the global population consists of individuals who need to bypass traditional financial intermediaries? This is a real but limited market. The people who truly need it are already using it.

A significant misjudgment in the industry has been treating a niche yet real demand channel as a universal infrastructure to reconstruct the entire world. Billions of dollars have been directed towards payments, social, and gaming, often based on a flawed assumption: that the average person generally needs decentralization. But the truth is, the vast majority of ordinary people do not need it; they care more about convenience, fallback, and low entry thresholds. Therefore, there are obviously more people willing to use Alipay than people who are willing to manage their own private keys.

But this doesn’t mean it lacks significance. Quite the opposite; as long as it can solve a portion of real problems, it is already significant enough. Just as printing shook the church's monopoly on knowledge, and the internet shook the traditional media's monopoly on information, blockchain genuinely shakes the financial intermediaries' monopoly on the flow of value. Blockchain has, for the first time on a global scale, turned this ability to store and transfer value without relying on a single institution into a reality that ordinary people can use. This change may take decades to reveal all its consequences, but the direction is irreversible.

In a world where bank accounts can be frozen, currencies can be infinitely diluted, and financial institutions can impose arbitrary limits, a value transfer network that can never be fully shut down has meaning in its very existence. It may not belong to everyone, but its existence will permanently change boundaries. Once this door is opened, it can never be closed again.

Q: One last question, what advice would you give to ordinary participants?

True freedom is not owning a decentralized wallet, but having a mind that is not enslaved by group emotions. This industry lacks enthusiasm, lacks scams, and lacks self-absorbed idealists and bloodthirsty speculators. Most projects will go to zero, most narratives will be forgotten, and most participants will lose money. In such a market with no cash flow, no clear intrinsic value, and no safety margins to measure, what you can truly invest in is often not a specific project, but your own judgment.

Every deep reading, every forced reflection, every inner dialogue without avoidance, broadens your ability to remain unencumbered by narrative. In cryptocurrency and all fast-evolving fields, what can truly transcend cycles is often not a specific narrative, but the ability to remain unperturbed by narratives.