Is crypto really going off course? From ideals to a furious casino

Recently, an article titled “I’ve Wasted Eight Years of My Life in Crypto” has sparked quite a controversy. The author Ken Chang expressed deep disappointment: he entered the industry believing that blockchain would restructure the global financial system, but in reality, it turned out to be a giant gambling playground, serving speculative interests more than building meaningful infrastructure.

He can’t be wrong. Looking back at fifteen years of Bitcoin history, it’s clear: besides a few truly valuable applications (Bitcoin, stablecoins, DEX), the rest are mainly fluctuations, meme coins issued and then crashed, perpetual contracts aimed solely at “outperforming” each other, and an ecosystem of financial traps. Every day, hundreds of new project tokens emerge, hundreds of popular ICOs, and hundreds of ways to lose money — this isn’t innovation, it’s a furious festival on a grand scale.

Ken previously worked at Ribbon Finance, a systematic options protocol. He realized that he wasn’t building a decentralized financial world, but rather part of a money-making machine for residual players. This sentiment probably isn’t unique to him.

Repeating history of attacks

Interestingly, Mike Hearn — one of Bitcoin’s legendary figures — said almost the same thing nearly ten years ago. Hearn argued that Bitcoin failed because its community failed. Instead of becoming a truly decentralized currency, Bitcoin became a system controlled by a small group, and the technology designed to prevent this proved completely ineffective. Hearn’s and Ken’s arguments are similar: technology had an initial purpose, but the outcome was altered.

History repeating itself is proof that this isn’t a personal issue but a systemic contradiction between what crypto promises and what it actually delivers.

Five conflicting aspirations of crypto

To understand why this industry diverges so much, we need to look at what different factions within crypto truly want:

Faction One: Sound Money
Those who believe Bitcoin will replace the dollar and bring a new monetary order see everything else as noise. But after 15 years, Bitcoin remains a speculative asset, its price more influenced by investor sentiment than real value.

Faction Two: Contract Coding
Ethereum and smart contract developers believe that once we can encode transaction terms into code, the world will become more efficient. This idea is theoretically sound, but in practice, most smart contracts are used for derivatives — a more sophisticated form of gambling.

Faction Three: Digital Ownership
Web3 and NFTs promise that digital ownership will become real. This goal isn’t entirely unreasonable, but the execution has been disastrous. Billions of dollars invested in NFTs and Web3 social networks, yet few still believe in them.

Faction Four: Enhancing Capital Markets Efficiency
This is the most “vague” goal — it lacks the vibrant ideological colors of other factions. However, it is a real driving force for many projects: Western financial systems are outdated, difficult to upgrade, and need rebuilding from scratch. Blockchain technology could be the answer, but when successful, the benefits mainly go into the pockets of big corporations.

Faction Five: Global Financial Inclusion
Finally, some optimists believe blockchain will bring low-cost financial services worldwide. There is at least some concrete evidence — especially with stablecoins in countries with high inflation or lacking banking infrastructure.

Visible vulnerabilities

The problem is: the crypto industry is trying to achieve five completely different goals simultaneously, which conflict with each other. Dreamers of a decentralized world see billions of dollars from VCs pouring into entirely unnecessary new blockchains. Tech followers see countless meaningless prediction markets, angry meme coins, and perpetual DEXs operating because funds are willing to spend on them.

In reality: venture capitalists are not wrong to do what investors want — they are just channels for capital. But the market itself stimulates these kinds of speculation. The explosion of meme coin launchpads, furious trading, and vapor finance isn’t the work of villains — it’s a natural result of building a capital market that doesn’t require permission.

Pragmatic optimism as the answer

So who is right? The optimists or the pessimists?

Actually, the answer lies somewhere in between. Speculation, hype, and corresponding capital are inevitable (side effects) of building new financial infrastructure. They cause real personnel costs, especially as younger generations normalize meme coin trading anger, viewing it as a game rather than a form of gambling.

But this is the price of freedom. You can’t build an open capital market and control everything people do with it.

The key point is: crypto has legitimate goals, and those ideals motivate tens of thousands of people to participate. However, the results probably won’t be as beautiful as you imagine. Bitcoin won’t suddenly replace the dollar. NFTs won’t revolutionize digital ownership. Capital markets will adopt blockchain slowly. Smart contracts are mostly used for derivatives.

But the current state is better than ever. We have Bitcoin, stablecoins, DEXs, and applications truly aligned with the market. That is progress. The other things — angry meme coins, perpetual trading, speculation — are just ugly tumors on the industry’s belly, hard to remove but objectively present.

The choice is yours: either accept these side effects for what can be achieved, or let go. Both are reasonable. But if you stay, remember: be optimistic based on reality, not blind optimism. Only this way can you endure.