If you've been in the crypto industry for the past few years, you've definitely felt that increasingly strong sense of "burnout." Last weekend, Aevo co-founder Ken Chan's long article undoubtedly struck a chord with many. He used an extreme title—"I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in the Crypto Industry." This isn't just one person's state, but a collective fatigue among industry professionals. Ken wrote about a truth many dare not admit: in the crypto industry, it's really easy to lose track of time. This isn't just idle talk. You might stay up all night for airdrops, monitor the market for launches, chase rising and falling prices for narratives, research a new protocol all night, and participate in countless unpaid tasks for community governance. From romantic liberalism to experiments with on-chain autonomy, and now to the runaway surge in memes, perpetuities, and gambling-themed projects, all of this is enough to make one wonder: are we truly participating in a technological revolution, or are we working for an infinitely greedy casino? The doubts of those in the industry don't stem from a lack of conviction, but from the brutal structure of the crypto industry itself: narrative lifecycles are shorter than product lifecycles; hype outweighs fundamentals; speculation moves much faster than development; hero worship and collective skepticism coexist; and many projects don't end in failure, but in disappearance. Frankly, many have experienced what Ken felt. And these doubts are not unfounded. "What exactly are we upholding?" This question carries far more weight than "Will the price of Bitcoin continue to rise?" So when we say "We believe in crypto," what are we truly believing in? Are we believing in the project teams? No. Are we believing in a particular celebrity or KOL? Of course not. Are we believing in narratives? That's even less likely. Many people will suddenly realize that what they've truly believed in all along might only be one thing: what we still hold onto and believe in is the significance of crypto to the world. Therefore, after Ken's article went viral, Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, quickly wrote another response article—"I Don't Regret Spending Eight Years in the Crypto Industry." What is the significance of crypto to the world? Nic Carter offered his five points: making the monetary system more robust, encoding business logic with smart contracts, making digital property rights real, improving the efficiency of capital markets, and expanding global financial inclusion. Don't forget why we started. Whenever the industry is in turmoil, we can perhaps reread the Bitcoin white paper. "A peer-to-peer electronic cash system"—this is the first sentence of the white paper. In 2008, the financial crisis hit, banks collapsed, and Lehman Brothers crumbled. Financiers and politicians made the world pay for their risks and mistakes. Bitcoin was not created to create wealth, but to answer the question: "Can we build a monetary system that doesn't rely on any centralized institution?" For the first time in history, humanity possesses a currency that doesn't require trust in anyone. This is the only truly independent financial system in the world that doesn't belong to any country, company, or individual. You can criticize ETH, criticize Solana, criticize all L2, criticize all DEXs, but few will criticize Bitcoin, because its original purpose has never changed. Any Web2 company can close your account tomorrow; but no one can stop you from sending Bitcoin tomorrow. There will always be people who dislike it, don't believe in it, or even attack it, but no one can change it. Water benefits all things without contention. The existence of global inflation, high sovereign debt, asset scarcity after a long period of declining risk-free interest rates, financial oppression, and lack of privacy... makes the vision of the crypto industry not outdated, but even more urgent. As Nic Carter said, "I have never seen a technology that can drive the upgrading of capital market infrastructure more than crypto." Why isn't this a failed industry? Ken said he wasted eight years. But have we really wasted our youth? In hyperinflationary countries like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela, Bitcoin and stablecoins have become de facto "shadow financial systems." For the first time, hundreds of millions of people without access to the banking system possess global digital assets; for the first time, humanity has global assets that it can control independently; international payments no longer require banks; billions of people have access to the same financial system for the first time; financial infrastructure is beginning to transcend national borders; and an asset independent of violence and power is gaining global recognition… For a country with high inflation, a stable, non-depreciating currency is like a Noah's Ark, hence stablecoins account for 61.8% of Argentina's cryptocurrency trading volume. For freelancers with overseas businesses, digital nomads, and the wealthy, USDT is their digital dollar. Compared to hiding dollars under a mattress or risking exchanging currency on the black market, clicking a mouse to convert pesos to USDT seems more elegant and secure. Whether it's cash transactions by street vendors or USDT transfers by the elite, both essentially reflect a distrust of the state's credit and a protection of private property. In a country with high taxes, low welfare, and a constantly depreciating currency, every "grey transaction" is a rebellion against systemic exploitation. For a century, the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires has changed hands many times, and the peso has been worthless. But ordinary people, through underground transactions and their own "grey wisdom," have managed to find a way out of seemingly hopeless situations. Related Reading: "Underground Argentina: Jewish Money Exchanges, Chinese Supermarkets, Dejected Young People, and the Middle Class Falling Back into Poverty"

Almost all of the world's top 20 funds have established Web3 departments; TradeFi institutions continue to flock in (BlackRock, Fidelity, CME); national digital currency systems are modeled after Bitcoin; digital asset ETFs across the US are setting new records for capital inflows; in just 15 years, Bitcoin has jumped to the top ten global financial assets…

Even with bubbles, speculation, chaos, and scams, some facts have already occurred. These changes have undeniably altered the world to some extent. And we stand in an industry that will continue to change the global financial structure.

Have we really left nothing behind?

Many people still ask, "If 15 years from now, all these chains and projects are gone, and the protocols have been replaced by more advanced infrastructure, aren't we just wasting our youth?" Let's look at another industry: In 2000, the dot-com bubble burst, and NASDAQ plummeted by 78%; in 1995, Amazon was criticized as "a website that sells books"; in 1998, Google was considered "not as user-friendly as Yahoo"; in 2006, social networks were seen as "teenage rebellion." The early days of the internet were filled with: thousands of failed startups; completely vanished innovation; massive investments going to waste; and tens of thousands feeling they had wasted their youth. Early BBS forums, portals, dial-up internet, and paid email services are almost nonexistent today, and 90% of the first generation of mobile internet products did not survive. But these are by no means "wasteful"; they form the soil of the mobile era. The infrastructure they created—browsers, TCP/IP, early servers, compilers—they are the foundation upon which Facebook, Google, Apple, mobile internet, cloud computing, and AI all built. The history of social networks is a constantly breaking cycle, just as TikTok today is built from countless dead social networks. Each generation replaces the previous one, but no generation is in vain. No industry has a clean, linear, clear, correct, or well-defined path. All foundational technology industries experience chaos, bubbles, trial and error, and misunderstandings until they change the world. The crypto industry is no exception. Technological revolutions in the crypto industry have never been accomplished by a single generation. Everything we've done, even if ETH is replaced by other chains, L2 is rewritten by new architectures, and the DEXs we use today all disappear, will never have been in vain. Because what we provide is the foundational soil, trial and error, parameters, social experiments, path dependence, and experiences and samples absorbed by the future. Not the end result itself. Moreover, you are not alone in persisting. Millions of developers, researchers, fund managers, node operators, builders, and traders around the world are slowly driving this era forward. We are with you. —Written for those still on this path.