Stepping Out of the Circle and Embracing the Real World
Author: Dougie
Translation: Baihua Blockchain
I am not referring to prices going to zero, nor am I suggesting that blockchain stops producing blocks or that stablecoins quietly disappear. What I mean is that for someone like me, who has spent most of the last decade living within this industry, some things have become very unsettling.
My career, my network, and a large part of my identity are built around "cryptocurrency." I have experienced the ICO boom, the DeFi summer, the NFT frenzy, the Points era, and the Memecoins… almost all the peaks and troughs. In Telegram groups, on Crypto Twitter (CT), at various conferences, and in countless founder calls, the starting point has been the same: cryptocurrency is the center of the universe, and our job is to make this universe bigger.
What I now believe is almost the exact opposite.
Cryptocurrency as a "self-consistent world" is dying.
This technology is about to dissolve into everything else, and those who mistake the "old bubble" for the endgame will be left behind by the times.
So, why do I still have faith in it?
Because this death leads to a future that is grander than the industry we have been defending.
The Bubble We Built
For most of the modern cryptocurrency lifecycle, the loudest corners have been constructed by "crypto natives" for "crypto natives."
The target audience is not anyone who wants to trade, nor anyone who wants a better or different version of finance. Instead, it is a narrower group: those whose financial lives are entirely on-chain.
We optimized everything around these users:
Assume you can easily transfer five or six-figure sums through a browser plugin interface.
Essentially equivalent to an education method of "go read more Twitter threads."
A feature set built around liquidity mining, points, token emissions, and those "meta-games" that only insiders can understand.
Most importantly, we established a go-to-market (GTM) strategy that primarily works for insiders:
Airdrop a token with a points program.
Launch liquidity mining.
Start an invite code mechanism.
Create a Discord channel, hire an intern to manage the account, and call it a "community."
This is the "cryptocurrency serving cryptocurrency" playbook: closed-loop incentives targeting that batch of wallet addresses that already know how to mine, rebalance, and sell. When founders say "user growth," they usually mean "recycling within the same batch of wallets that everyone is competing for."
Underlying this is a tacit assumption that has supported many careers: over time, the world will eventually become more like us.
But that hasn't happened. The number of users has grown, but the culture remains niche and self-referential. Most activities still revolve around the same behaviors: trading on-chain assets, leveraging, and chasing short-term incentives.
What we have long referred to as the "crypto industry" does not look like a universal technology ecosystem but more like a highly liquid, large-scale multiplayer online game (MMO).
This world is interesting, truly amazing. But its ceiling is fundamentally locked.
What I Mean by "Death"
So, when I say "cryptocurrency is dead," I do not mean that the chains have shut down and everyone has gone home. I am not saying that tokens have disappeared or that the technology has failed.
What I mean is:
Cryptocurrency as an independent industry is dissolving. The boundaries between "crypto" and "fintech," "AI infrastructure," "payments," "markets," and "casinos" are becoming blurred. "Crypto startups" are no longer a real category; they are just startups that happen to use blockchain.
Most purely "crypto native" applications either die or never grow up. If your target market is "those who spend all day on-chain," you are building in a dead end. There will always be niche markets, and some will do well, but that is not how this technology will change the world.
Labels have become burdens. Calling something "Crypto" or "Web3" no longer helps attract users, regulators, or capital. Ordinary founders will integrate these underlying protocols without adopting this identity label.
The victory of cryptocurrency is not achieved by turning the world into "crypto natives." Its victory lies in the fact that no one has to become a "crypto native" to benefit from it.
What I mean by death is the demise of the old world where cryptocurrency is a self-aware and independent entity that expects the whole world to step into our universe, learn our language, and embrace our rituals.
From "Crypto Native" to "Real World Native"
Technological applications often seem dull. In the early days, you attract oddballs and staunch believers. If the technology is real, it will disappear into everything else. People no longer talk about it as "technology" but start discussing what they can do with it.
This is the trend I see: the condition for success is not "more crypto natives," but "more ordinary people."
We have already seen signs:
Polymarket users checking election odds do not realize they are querying the blockchain.
Merchants in Lagos or Buenos Aires settle invoices using USDT because it can settle in seconds.
Savers in high-inflation countries hold USDC, not because they "believe in cryptocurrency," but because their local currency is collapsing.
These users integrate cryptocurrency into their lives without needing to know what a "Rollup" is. The technology makes their lives cheaper, faster, and better.
But this is not just a dichotomy between "Degens" and "Normies." There is also a huge middle class that we have long overlooked: they are tech-savvy, care about privacy and control, or enjoy direct market access, but have no interest in "points mining." They want self-custody but do not want to embrace crypto native culture. They want better underlying protocols, not a new social persona.
To be fair, we are closer than ever to serving them. The onboarding process and UX have improved significantly (mobile-first, social logins, Apple Pay). You no longer need a master's degree in cryptocurrency to use on-chain protocols.
That is why the bottleneck is no longer UX (user experience), but Intent.
Since we can hand these tools to anyone, what do we choose to build? Who do we choose to serve?
Typically, the answer is still:
"We are solving crypto native problems for crypto natives."
"We are providing better retention methods for those already on-chain."
"We are building better casinos for those who sit at the gambling table all day."
This is precisely the part that will be discarded.
We should foresee that cryptocurrency will follow the path taken by other foundational technologies. No one says, "I am an internet user," and no one boasts, "I am using the cloud." You use products; you get things done.
"Crypto users" will sound just as strange.
What Should Persist
None of this is advocating for burning down the entire culture. There are parts of crypto native culture that should persist and spread:
Permissionless access: Anyone can connect and build.
Global liquidity and 24/7 markets: Markets that never sleep.
Composability: Open states and open APIs.
User ownership (selectively): Where it truly makes products better.
There is also a "benign eccentricity" worth preserving: the courage to build openly, the instinct for open source, and the willingness to try financial experiments that traditional boards would never approve.
And we must be honest: casinos have paid a lot for infrastructure. The speculative flows and peak fees that everyone scoffs at have funded the infrastructure that supports mundane matters like payments. The goal is not to kill the casino but to stop mistaking the casino for the entire city.
Crypto culture has given us a real gift. The point is not to bury them but to "smuggle" them into everything else.
Why the Old Script No Longer Works
If you believe any of the above, you must look at the current script from a different angle.
Liquidity mining, points, and airdrops are mostly just moving the same batch of existing funds between slightly different UIs. The cycle is: launch -> mine -> crazy mining -> exit -> complain about "mercenary users." Day one metrics look great, but month three retention is usually a disaster.
From an investor's perspective, you learn to recognize this false prosperity shape: some teams are extremely good at generating attention and incentives, but when you ask the following questions, they fall silent:
Who else can use this besides people on Crypto Twitter (CT)?
Why would they use it once the rewards stop?
What does this mean for those who do not think in "basis points" and "token symbols"?
The problem is not that we cannot reach ordinary people, but that we rarely put thought into building something meaningful for them.
Another obstacle is compliance. If you engage with real payment networks, you will eventually have to deal with KYC. If you want institutional counterparties, you need guardrails. If you are dealing with credit, identity, or real-world assets (RWA), the whole "everyone stays anonymous" setup will quickly fail.
Part of the on-chain economy will remain completely anonymous and unregulated; that is its nature. But to think that most economic activity will stay there is naive.
The mindset of "you will all eventually become like us" avoids the hard work that needs to be done in solving problems, distributing channels, and business models. You can now feel that fatigue—when hype fails to translate into lasting applications or returns. This is not just a macro environment issue; it is the ceiling touched by "building only for insiders."
Cryptocurrency as the Backend of the World
If the old script is fading, what will happen next?
I divide it into three layers:
Infrastructure Layer: Quiet, Dull, Vast. Blockchain becomes the default protocol in specific domains: cross-border payment settlements, areas where stablecoins have clear advantages, and shared states for identity/collateral/ownership records. Most users will never know or care that it is "on-chain."
Product Layer: No longer "crypto products," just products. Applications in fintech, commerce, and other fields use on-chain technology only when it is genuinely helpful, actively hiding complexity, and competing on dimensions like price, speed, UX, and trust. They do not brand themselves as "on-chain"; they brand themselves as cheaper, faster, and more global.
Speculation Layer: Persistently present but returns to the background. Casinos will not disappear; they just will no longer be the whole story. They become a vertical within the larger landscape rather than the cornerstone of the entire industry.
The ultimate outcome is that cryptocurrency dissolves into the tech stack rather than existing independently.
Winners and Losers
If cryptocurrency becomes a layer among everything, the incentives will change.
For Builders:
Losers: Teams that build solely for CT and that small circle of on-chain addresses; founders whose core skill is designing incentive programs and emission schedules.
Winners: Teams that start from real user problems and treat cryptocurrency as a detail of implementation; founders willing to become "dull" in important areas (trust, compliance, distribution).
For Investors:
Losers: Those whose investment logic is "crypto people making money off crypto people," treating reflexivity as a business model guarantee.
Winners: Investors underwriting demand, retention, and sustainable distribution paths in broad markets (payments, credit, identity, data).
For Existing Industries:
Losers: Those whose identity is built on "I got here early, and the world must adapt to me"; those who refuse to integrate and insist that "pure crypto" is the only correct version of the ecosystem.
Winners: Teams delivering protocols and products that real users love or depend on, integrating with existing financial flows and creating new demand. Embedding in the real economy is where lasting, substantial profits lie.
The Pain of Letting Go
If you have been in this field for a long time, this is hard to accept.
When you have been in the bunker for years, it is difficult to hear someone say, "The bunker is closing, and the war has moved elsewhere." It feels like a betrayal of the time, energy, and belief you have invested.
Many people's identities are built on "being early, being different, and playing a game that the rest of the world does not understand." The world adopts the tools but does not embrace this identity, which feels like a loss.
But this is the necessary path for successful technology.
The internet, as a subculture, "died" when it became mundane and ubiquitous. The moment "the cloud" was quietly adopted by every serious company, it was no longer an exciting frontier. Now, no one mourns those deaths; that is the price of winning.
The maturation of cryptocurrency means that the "Crypto" we know must die. This is not a failure; it is the bill we pay for the vision we once claimed to want to achieve.
Cryptocurrency is dead. Long live cryptocurrency.
If we do it right, we will no longer talk about "mainstreaming cryptocurrency" as a thing.
We will instead talk about:
Products and businesses that rely on these underlying protocols.
Markets that are more global, open, and programmable than those they replace.
People whose lives have changed because they have access to tools that local banking systems will never provide.
You can cling to the closed, self-referential industry we built, hoping the world will eventually agree to step into it. Or you can accept that phase is ending and start building and investing for everyone outside of us.
Our mission has never been to make everyone a "crypto native." Our mission is to make the world better with the tools we build, even if the world forgets what those tools are called.
If you are a builder or an investor, ask yourself a sharp question:
Am I solving problems for crypto natives, or am I solving problems for the world?
Your answer will determine which side of the obituary you ultimately stand on.
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/12/6166.html
Source: https://x.com/DougieDeLuca/status/2000957512862884100
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