Making money but feeling a lack of value is already a happy trouble.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

On August 5th, the cryptocurrency market experienced a major crash. Amid the crash, Péter Szilágyi, the head of Geth development and a member of the Ethereum Foundation, made a statement that was particularly distressing.

In his post, he questioned the actual value of the cryptocurrency industry, expressing frequent doubts about whether he had chosen the right industry.

"For example, SpaceX, they send rockets to Mars? Human progress. They failed to launch the rocket and it blew up? Humans learned a lesson and still progressed. All results have brought progress.

In contrast, the cryptocurrency industry is simply a casino prepared for fools (apologies to the few exceptions). Prices rise? Great, time to buy a sports car. Prices fall? Life is destroyed. What contribution does this make to humanity?

Yes, building a new monetary system does take time. Of course… but can't we do something useful in the process? Everyone wants to be the next Vitalik, no one wants to build something useful, everyone just wants to extract value.

I really can't see why this system shouldn't collapse. From a macro perspective, what will we lose? Everything the cryptocurrency industry has done so far is just a huge value transfer, I haven't seen any substantial value creation.

Please note that getting rich by luck and then transferring funds to some non-cryptocurrency projects does not count as a success story in cryptocurrency. At best, it's just a lucky philanthropist's success story, more likely just a simple diversification of investments.

In my opinion, this industry should have started creating some truly useful things a long time ago, things that people would be willing to use, otherwise it should just close its doors.

At least Bitcoin tried (although it failed) to become a safe-haven asset. But others are just selling shovels, with no signs of a gold rush."

This "industry nihilism" and "lack of value" are not only felt by Péter Szilágyi, but are the inner voices of many industry practitioners today.

Three months ago, the author conducted a small-scale survey and found that many practitioners around him were considering "retirement," gradually fading out of the industry. Some entrepreneurs are actively seeking buyers to exit, while industry veterans are mostly lying low…

When asked for the reasons, on the one hand, they feel that the industry has reached a mature stage, with institutions like BlackRock entering, making alpha and opportunities for ordinary people increasingly scarce; on the other hand, they are increasingly "tired" of the industry, feeling that their work lacks value.

After years of ups and downs, many practitioners have expressed disillusionment with the industry, no longer having idealism, strictly separating work and life, focusing all their attention on making money, seeing the industry's essence as a huge wealth transfer, and believing that it's best to make money and run.

A customer manager at a trading platform said that in her view, most investors are gamblers. When they make money, they act like they are above everyone else, and when they lose money, they threaten legal action. Gamblers are not worthy of sympathy.

A project founder said that when he first entered the industry, he also wanted to create a product that stood out, but later found that it was a naive idea. At this stage, the narrative is more important than the community, which is more important than networking, which is more important than the product. Even the product is "forced" to integrate Ponzi schemes, and even the leading narrative in the industry, the top cryptocurrency VC Paradigm, has become a master of market manipulation. Finding product-market fit in this industry is a long and arduous journey, and before that, survival is paramount.

Speculative profit remains the primary driver of this industry, and candlestick charts are the pulse of the cryptocurrency industry, everything else is just a disguise to rationalize trading behavior.

This inevitably reminds the author of a recent buzzword: financial shame.

Recently, at the graduation ceremony of the Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Li Feng, the vice dean of the institute, said in his speech:

"Some people have begun to think that the financial industry has no value, because finance does not seem to be hardcore technology, and they think that finance is a dispensable transaction cost; some financial practitioners, including some of our students and alumni, even feel professional shame."

Amid the wave of rectification in the financial industry, this new term has exposed the collective unease in the financial industry.

Little did they know, such unease and "cryptocurrency shame" have existed in the cryptocurrency industry for many years.

Many practitioners usually deliberately hide their identities when communicating with the public, first as a form of self-protection, and also to avoid the scrutiny and criticism of others' biases. In the public eye, the label of this industry is still "harvesting leeks," so many industry professionals often present themselves incognito in external communications: bar owners, US stock investors, financial practitioners…

Only in two situations do cryptocurrency industry investors proudly display themselves in their social circles, one is when the market is booming, after all, confidence comes from growth, and rising is convincing; the other is when they receive recognition from mainstream individuals and the market, such as the SEC approving a Bitcoin spot ETF, or endorsements from Musk and Trump for Bitcoin…

To this day, cryptocurrency assets and this industry still yearn for more support and recognition from people.

Cryptocurrency shame, lack of value, how to break the deadlock?

First of all, this "emotion" is not new. Since the birth of Bitcoin, there has always been FUD about the value of the industry.

The co-founder of 8btc, Lao Duan, was a Bitcoin evangelist in 2011, but two years later, he transformed into a "critic," saying, "The biggest value of Bitcoin at the moment is fulfilling the Chinese people's fantasy of 'getting rich overnight.'"

Whether it was in 2011 or today in 2024, over the extended timeline, we can still say the phrase, "We are still early." Compared to industries like the internet, the cryptocurrency industry is still in its early stages, still experiencing the troughs and darkness outlined by the technology maturity curve, the bursting of bubbles, public questioning, and then rebirth… There are too many unknowns, worth exploring.

We must first acknowledge the current dilemma of this industry, focusing on infrastructure and neglecting applications, lacking genuine product-market fit. Except for Bitcoin and stablecoins, most projects are still hovering in the realm of technical narratives, and are not as down-to-earth as MEME.

It's easy to pose questions, but it's difficult to confront challenges and make achievements, which can provide more tolerance and support for entrepreneurs, especially application-oriented entrepreneurs.

Not long ago, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik proposed a similar point in his latest speech "The Next Decade of Ethereum": "Developers should be brave in exploring and building applications that have an impact on the world, not just replicating Web2, but taking the lead. In 2034, there won't just be desktop and mobile devices, there will also be wearable devices, locally executable AI, AR…"

The development of blockchain and cryptocurrency is not a revolution in productivity, but an improvement in production relations, so it will not provide rapid feedback like the emergence of ChatGPT. In the future, Crypto may also need to actively integrate with emerging productivity such as AI and AR.

Recently, a group of industry professionals signed up for a safari hunting tour in Africa, needing to settle in US dollars. The lengthy bank payment procedures, contract reviews, high Swift fees, and bank charges made life difficult for the African locals and participants, and in the end, the African locals were introduced to stablecoins USDT/USDC… In comparison, the traditional Swift system seems like an ancient relic from the Stone Age.

From Russia to the African continent, the stablecoin is quietly ushering in a global revolution, and countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia are actively joining the mBridge project led by the People's Bank of China to achieve cross-border CBDC payments…

This is a long journey that requires patience, but as long as there is a little progress, it can make the world different.

Finally, what the author wants to say is:

Some people feel "cryptocurrency shame" because they feel spiritually empty for not creating actual value; others feel cryptocurrency shame because they have been losing money year after year, collecting various losing postures, and are embarrassed to say that they are old leeks…

After all, in the current harsh market, for most people, making money but feeling a lack of value is already a happy trouble.

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