Crypto Dream Shattered? Why Are More and More People Quietly Exiting?
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Crypto Dream Shattered? Why Are More and More People Quietly Exiting?
I'm well aware that such posts are usually seen by traders as "bottom signals."
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Travis Kling
Translation: TechFlow
After a rather terrible cryptocurrency summer, I’m publishing the third part of my series—preceded by “There’s no excuse for believing these things work or will ever work” and “Financial nihilism: The spirit of the age for young Americans.” This is a ~10-minute read titled “The Great Quiet Quit.”
I’ve been focused on crypto for seven years and have run Ikigai for over six. I have a broad network within the U.S. crypto scene and regularly speak with dozens of industry insiders.
Recently, I’ve observed or heard about a certain attitude or stance so frequently that it’s become a trend. Cryptocurrency is undergoing a widespread phenomenon of “quiet quitting.”
For context, if you’re unfamiliar with the term “quiet quitting,” it’s a relatively new concept—
Part of why people keep coming to me to discuss this “quiet quitting” mindset is because of my previous articles: “There’s no excuse for believing these things work or will ever work” and “Financial nihilism,” both of which.
These were among the most popular long-form pieces I’ve ever written. I still get mentioned on Twitter because of them. Last week at a crypto conference, at least six people brought them up in person—so clearly, they resonated.
The widespread trend of “quiet quitting” is a continuation of those earlier arguments, accurately capturing and predicting the current state of crypto.
What I’m observing and hearing is that a significant portion of the crypto community is demonstrably less engaged than in prior years. They’ve disengaged because they’ve lost faith in crypto projects’ ability to solve real problems and achieve mass adoption. From 2017 (the year I entered) to 2022, this dream was repeatedly promoted and widely accepted—“crypto will solve real-world problems and therefore gain widespread adoption.” Billions in venture capital were raised on this premise alone.
There were developments along the way that made people believe crypto was moving somewhere: DeFi was one, NFTs another, the rise of stablecoins another, Axie Infinity yet another. On top of that, Bitcoin’s adoption and price kept rising, backed by figures like Paul Tudor Jones, Saylor, and Elon—making people optimistic as BTC performed exceptionally well.
These factors, combined with smaller trends (like DAOs and the metaverse), kept overall sentiment positive and attracted many newcomers to crypto, both as investors and full-time workers. Sometimes, optimism turned into mania—but even at peak mania, most people internally recognized that much of it was unstable, overvalued, and lacked product-market fit. Those concerns always existed. During bear markets, when optimism faded, these worries intensified—but even during the worst downturns (like late 2018 and H2 2019), strong optimism toward various projects and broad hope in technological potential persisted.
I believe the current mood is different (and many seem to agree). As truths have surfaced, many things now appear meaningless and absurdly overvalued, and confidence in existing projects’ potential continues to erode.
Airdrop farming has proven an awkward and foolish failure in driving user adoption. Memecoin mania only deepened the embarrassment. For many multi-cycle crypto participants, it’s gradually sinking in that we’ve achieved very little in practice. This realization is deeply unsettling for those of us who’ve invested immense time and energy into the space over the years.
Suddenly, you might feel like most of your life’s effort has been wasted. You're disillusioned with crypto’s present and uncertain about its future direction.
To rationalize this, many experience cognitive dissonance—but eventually, the truth takes hold. This leads some to exit the space entirely. Others remain, but their motivation, passion, and belief are greatly diminished. Many stay simply because they can’t imagine doing anything else or allocating capital elsewhere. Would you take a regular corporate job? That sounds like a nightmare.
Then there’s the idea of “voting with your wallet.” Despite serious disappointment in crypto’s ability to fulfill its promise, many stay because, after adjusting for time and risk, returns are still perceived as more attractive than other investment options. It sounds contradictory, but it’s true—
“I believe BTC will outperform most asset classes in most years, even if it occasionally underperforms. And in the years it rallies, I expect a handful—or maybe many—altcoins to significantly outpace BTC. If I can spot those opportunities, I could easily multiply my portfolio. So it’s worth staying engaged…”
Imagine you’re 30, with around $2 million in liquid net worth earned from crypto investing over the past five years. It’s a lot, but likely not enough to retire. You need to grow that $2M into $5M or $10M to truly settle down—and you’re still young, not ready to retire.
You got into crypto in 2017 because it felt exciting, revolutionary, and full of potential. Financially, you did well personally—but you’re disappointed by how little the space has actually achieved, and you’re far less optimistic about crypto’s future… yet you haven’t left. Because where else would you spend your time? Trading stocks instead of altcoins? That doesn’t sound appealing. Public markets are more competitive, more efficient, and offer lower returns. So you keep watching, hoping to catch a moment that triples your net worth in a year… and situations like this are common.
Even as skepticism grows about whether “these things do or will ever do anything,” such views remain widespread. Crypto enthusiasts don’t know what will drive the next major rally. There’s no summer for DeFi, no NFT boom. Gaming is nearly dead. The metaverse has proven a complete joke. Decentralized social media has stalled. People are trying to get excited about crypto x AI, but I (like many) suspect this enthusiasm may be misplaced—at least for now.
DePIN is making progress and growing fast—an encouraging development, possibly the most promising corner of the altcoin space today. It’s one area where people hope real-world utility could drive future price appreciation. But such areas in crypto are few and far between.
Another issue is the heavily criticized crypto VC investment landscape. In short, the crypto market continues to reward VCs who invest early in token projects—even when those projects show almost no progress toward their intended use case—allowing VCs to dump tokens at massive profits onto retail investors.
A token project can: run points-to-airdrop schemes; artificially inflate valuations; hire market makers and pay high fees to guarantee profits regardless; list on major centralized exchanges; then dump heavily, crashing the price. Even if the token drops 85% post-listing, early VCs still walk away with multiples. This is a defining feature of today’s altcoin market structure. Crypto enables VCs to recycle capital from investments that never truly mattered and raise new funds. A textbook case of misaligned incentives. It’s hard to blame VCs—people act according to incentives. And so far, the market has said: “Please, VCs, bring us more low-quality projects with absurd fully diluted valuations (FDV) on major CEXs, then dump them on us.” Until the market stops offering these opportunities, don’t expect behavior to change. They’re earning enough to buy private jets.
There’s a saying in crypto circles, popularized by a friend of mine: “Do you want to do the right thing, or do you want to make money?” It’s become a mantra for many in the industry. I understand—it emphasizes profit above all, especially over the desire to be “right.” But let me offer a counterpoint—“If you make enough wrong decisions while making money, you may eventually lose the chance to keep making money from wrong decisions.” We’re now witnessing some of that.
All of this helps explain the widespread “quiet quitting” across crypto. Returning to the traditional definition of “quiet quitting” from The New Yorker—in the workplace, quiet quitting damages company culture. It’s every ambitious CEO’s worst fear. When employees see others not working hard and not believing in the mission, they naturally adopt the same mindset. We’re mimetic creatures. Passion is contagious—and so is apathy. That’s why quiet quitting breeds more quiet quitting.
To date, this cycle hasn’t come close to attracting as many new users as prior cycles (excluding new ETF investors). Crypto is not the top choice for America’s brightest and most talented young minds. The damage since 2022 remains, and the industry has done little to repair its reputation and attract top-tier talent. Imagine considering joining a company where quiet quitting is widespread—would that be an opportunity you’d jump at?
So what does this mean?
I know full well that posts like this are often interpreted by traders as a “bottom signal.” In crypto history, buying when sentiment is most pessimistic and selling when it’s most euphoric has often yielded extraordinary returns. This widespread “quiet quitting” is undeniably a bearish signal—so conventionally, this would be the time to go all in. I get that.
Another rebuttal to my argument is the classic: “We’re still early, bro.” Stop saying that. We’re not early. Bitcoin now has a $1 trillion market cap, nearly half of Wall Street holds it, and the rest of crypto is another $1 trillion. Tether owns more U.S. Treasuries than Germany. Over $20 billion in venture capital has flowed into the space in the past four years. We are not early anymore.
Stop comparing this to the “late 1990s internet” and pretending we’re in the same phase. This is not the late 1990s internet. Bitcoin and stablecoins have found product-market fit. Everything else is adrift at sea. At best, they’re solutions in search of problems. At worst, they’re ruthless, merciless scams.
Still, I believe there’s room for cautious optimism about altcoins. In my view, the most promising scenario is Trump winning in November, leading to a de facto regulatory framework that allows altcoin structures to be redesigned with security-like features, enabling meaningful value accrual.
We’ve talked for years about value creation and value capture—the bridge between them being token design. Under a Trump administration, worthless governance tokens could be phased out, replaced by pseudo-securities with yield and burn mechanisms—enabled by a U.S. regulatory environment that permits such innovation. In that world, you could envision a much more legitimate altcoin market two years from now.
This is a development worth watching closely.
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@Travis_Kling
