Crypto is dead, long live Crypto

2025.12.17

Crypto is dead, long live Crypto

Are you solving problems for crypto natives, or are you solving problems for the entire world?

2025.12.17 - 07:04:41

Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights

Are you solving problems for crypto natives, or are you solving problems for the entire world?

Author: Dougie

Translation: TechFlow

Crypto is dead.

I don't mean prices going to zero, blockchains halting block production, or stablecoins quietly vanishing. I mean a deeply uncomfortable truth for people like me who have spent the last decade immersed in this industry.

My career, my network, and even much of my identity have revolved around "crypto." I've lived through the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom, the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) summer, the NFT craze, points-based metaverses, meme coins—participating in nearly every wave.

In Telegram groups, on Crypto Twitter, at conferences, and countless founder calls, there was a shared assumption: crypto was the center of the universe, and our job was to expand it.

Now, I hold almost the exact opposite view.

The idea of "crypto" as a self-contained world is dying.

The technology is about to merge into everything else, and those who mistook past bubbles for the end goal will be left behind.

So why am I still bullish on crypto?

Because this "death" is the gateway to something far greater than the industry we've been defending.

The "Bubble World" We Built

In the modern history of crypto, the noisiest areas have often been built by "crypto natives" for "crypto natives."

Here, "crypto natives" doesn’t refer to all traders or those seeking better or different financial systems, but a narrower group: those who’ve fully moved their financial lives on-chain.

We’ve optimized everything around these users:

Interfaces assume users are comfortable transferring five- or six-figure sums via browser extensions;
Educational content is essentially “read more tweets”;
Feature sets revolve around yield farming, points, token drops, and meta-games only insiders understand;
More importantly, we’ve developed a go-to-market playbook that mostly works only on ourselves:
- Launch a token with a points program;
- Start yield farming;
- Roll out referral codes;
- Create a Discord community, hire an intern to run it, and call it “community.”

This is the so-called “crypto-for-crypto’s-sake” meta-game: closed-loop incentives targeting wallets already familiar with on-chain farming, rotation, and dumping. When founders talk about “user acquisition,” they often mean “fighting other projects for the same pool of wallet addresses.”

Underlying all this is a quiet assumption driving many careers: over time, the world will become more like us.

But that hasn’t happened. User numbers have grown, but the culture remains niche and self-referential. Most activity still centers on the same behaviors: trading on-chain assets, leveraged positions, chasing short-term incentives.

What we call the “crypto industry” doesn’t resemble a general-purpose tech ecosystem—it looks more like a highly liquid, massive multiplayer online game (MMO).

It’s an interesting world, even a great one. But its potential is ultimately limited.

What Do I Mean by “Death”?

When I say “crypto is dead,” I don’t mean blockchains stop running and everyone goes home; nor do I mean tokens vanish or the technology fails completely.

I mean:

Crypto as a standalone industry is disintegrating. The boundaries between crypto and “fintech,” “AI infrastructure,” “payments,” “markets,” and “casinos” are blurring. “Crypto startups” will no longer be a distinct category—they’ll just be regular startups that happen to use blockchain tech.

Apps built solely for crypto natives will either die or remain permanently niche. If your target market (TAM) is “people who live on-chain all day,” you’re working in a dead end. While this niche will always exist and some can profit from it, this isn’t how blockchain changes the world.

The label “crypto” is becoming a liability. Calling something “crypto” or “Web3” no longer helps attract users, win regulatory support, or secure capital. Mainstream builders will integrate blockchain into their products without branding themselves as “crypto companies.”

The victory of crypto isn’t making the world into crypto natives—it’s enabling everyone to benefit without becoming one.

By “death,” I mean the end of crypto as a self-contained, isolated world—one that once expected others to enter our universe, learn our language, and adopt our rituals. That expectation is now dying.

From “Crypto Natives” to “Real-World Natives”

Technology adoption rarely looks glamorous. It starts with a small group of “weirdos” and “true believers.” If the tech is real, it eventually fades into everything else—people stop calling it “tech” and focus instead on what it enables.

This is exactly where I believe we’re headed: success will no longer be measured by “more crypto natives,” but by “more regular people.”

We’re already seeing early signs:

Users querying election odds on Polymarket may not even realize they’re accessing a blockchain;
Merchants in Lagos or Buenos Aires use USDT to settle invoices because it clears in seconds;
Savers in high-inflation economies hold USDC—not because they “believe in crypto,” but because their local currency is collapsing.

These users integrate crypto into their lives without knowing what a “rollup” is. The tech makes their lives cheaper, faster, more efficient.

But it’s not just “speculators” vs. “regular people.” We overlook a vast middle ground: tech-savvy individuals who care about privacy, autonomy, or direct market access, but have zero interest in yield farming or points. They want self-custody, but not the crypto-native culture. They seek better tools, not a new identity.

Honestly, we’re closer than ever to serving this group. Onboarding and UX have improved dramatically—we now have mobile-first experiences, social logins, Apple Pay and card payments, abstracted wallets. Using on-chain tech no longer requires a “crypto PhD.”

The bottleneck is no longer UX—it’s intent.

Now that we can put this tech in anyone’s hands, what do we choose to build? Who do we choose to serve?

Too often, the answer remains:

“We’re solving problems for crypto natives, using crypto natives.”
“We’re making it easier for people already on-chain to stay on-chain.”
“We’re building a better casino for people who already live in casinos.”

And that part will be left behind.

We should expect crypto to follow the path of other foundational technologies. No one says “I’m an internet user.” No one brags about “using the cloud.” People just use products and get things done.

One day, “crypto user” will sound just as odd.

What’s Worth Preserving?

This isn’t a call to erase crypto culture. In fact, parts of it are worth preserving and spreading:

Permissionless access: Anyone can plug in and build.
Global liquidity and 24/7 markets: A market that never sleeps.
Composability: Open state and open APIs that fuel innovation and collaboration.
User ownership (selectively): Giving users ownership where it genuinely improves the product.

There are also some “fun quirks” worth keeping:

Public development: Iterating and shipping in public view.
Open-source ethos: Driving technical progress and community collaboration.
Daring to experiment with finance: A boldness traditional boards would never approve.

We must also face reality: casinos (speculative markets) funded much of the infrastructure. The speculative flows and fee spikes that many dismiss actually financed “boring” infra like payments. The goal isn’t to destroy the casino, but to stop mistaking it for the entire city.

Crypto culture has given us real gifts. The problem isn’t burying it, but smuggling it quietly into other domains.

Why the Old Rules Are Ending

If you agree with the above, you must rethink the current rules.

Liquidity mining, points programs, and airdrops mostly recycle the same capital among the same crowd via slightly different UIs. The cycle: launch project, farm rewards, farm deeper, exit, then complain “users are too speculative.” Day-one metrics look amazing, but three-month retention is usually dismal.

From an investor’s view, you can quickly spot this hype pattern: teams skilled at attention-grabbing and incentive design, but stumped when asked key questions:

Who is this product for beyond Crypto Twitter (CT)?
Why would they keep using it after rewards stop?
What does this mean for people who don’t care about APY or ticker symbols?

The issue isn’t that we can’t reach regular people anymore—our tools now allow it. The real problem is our reluctance to build things that matter to them.

Another collision point is growth. When you try to leave the bubble, you often hit compliance walls head-on.

KYC and regulation aren’t top-down impositions—they’re adopted by scrappy founders who realize their businesses can’t scale without them.

Touch real payment rails, and you’ll touch KYC.
Want to work with institutional counterparties? You need guardrails.
Deal with credit, identity, or real-world assets? “Everyone stays anonymous” quickly breaks down.

Part of the on-chain economy may remain fully anonymous and unregulated. That’s fine. But assuming most economic activity will stay there is naive.

The mindset of “you’ll all become like us” is really an escape from the hard work of solving real problems, distributing products, and building business models. You feel the fatigue when hype fails to translate into lasting adoption or returns. It’s not just macro—it’s the ceiling imposed by building only for ourselves.

Crypto Becomes the World’s Backend

If the old rules are failing, what comes next? I see it in three layers:

1) Infrastructure Layer: Quiet, boring, but significant

Blockchains will become default infrastructure in certain domains: settlement layers for specific payments and markets, stablecoins in cross-border flows, shared state for identity, collateral, and ownership records.

Most users won’t know or care these services are “on-chain.” They’ll just experience faster settlements, more reliable access, globally-enabled defaults, and programmable money features banks can’t offer.

2) Product Layer: Not “crypto products,” just products

Applications in fintech, commerce, etc., will adopt on-chain tech only when it genuinely improves UX—and will hide the complexity. These apps will compete on the same terms as others: price, speed, UX, trust.

They won’t advertise being “on-chain,” but will highlight being cheaper, faster, more global, composable, and sometimes fairer.

3) Speculation Layer: Persistent, but repositioned

The “casino” won’t disappear—but it won’t define the whole story. Meme coins, complex derivatives, pure speculation venues will persist. Some will stay niche; others may blur into mainstream trading and entertainment. They don’t need to vanish.

The key shift: speculation becomes one vertical within a larger ecosystem, not the foundation of the entire “industry.”

In the end, crypto won’t be a standalone sector—it’ll quietly embed into the global tech stack, becoming the backend that powers the world, not a separate realm.

Winners and Losers

When crypto becomes the foundational layer, incentives shift.

For developers:

Losers: Teams building products solely for Crypto Twitter (CT) and a handful of on-chain addresses; founders whose main skill is designing yield farms, points programs, and token distributions.
Winners: Teams starting from real user problems and treating crypto as an implementation detail; founders willing to do the “boring” but essential work in trust, compliance, and distribution.

For investors:

Losers: Funds whose thesis is “crypto for crypto people,” with “reflexivity” as their core business model.
Winners: Investors focused on real demand, user retention, and sustainable distribution paths across broad markets—payments, credit, identity, markets, data.

For existing players:

Losers: Those whose identity is “I got in early, so the world should adapt to me”; ecosystems rejecting integration and insisting “pure crypto” is the only valid path.
Winners: Teams building infrastructure and products loved and relied on by real users; projects that integrate into existing financial and consumer flows; teams willing to collaborate when bringing new demand on-chain. Embedding crypto into the real economy is the key to long-term, outsized success.

Accepting the Shift Isn’t Easy

If you’ve spent years in crypto, this shift may be hard to accept.

After years in the trenches, hearing “the trench is closing, the battlefield has moved” can feel like a betrayal of your time, effort, and belief—especially when the industry still isn’t widely accepted.

Many identities are built on being “early,” “different,” “playing a game outsiders don’t get.” Now, the world may adopt the tools but reject the identity—a loss felt deeply.

But this is the normal arc of all successful technologies.

The internet as a subculture “died” because it became universal and mundane; “cloud” is no longer exciting because every serious company quietly uses it. Today, no one mourns these “deaths”—they’re the price of success.

Crypto’s maturity means the “crypto” we know must die. But this isn’t failure—it’s the inevitable outcome of what we set out to achieve.

Crypto is dead. Long live crypto.

If we embrace this shift correctly, we’ll stop viewing “crypto adoption” as a standalone goal.

Instead, we’ll talk about:

Products and businesses relying on this infrastructure;
Markets that are more global, open, and programmable than existing systems;
People whose lives changed because they gained tools their local banking system couldn’t provide.

You can cling to the closed, insular industry we built, hoping the world eventually joins; or you can accept this phase is ending and start building and investing for a broader audience.

Our mission was never to make everyone a crypto native. Our mission was to use our tools to make the world better—even if the world eventually forgets their names.