Tale of the crypto founder You friend messaged you about this crypto thing. He said he's making a lot of money off it. You are intrigued. You download Coinbase. Before long you've made some money. This shit's easy. You get the hang of it. More importantly, you get the bug. You can't stop thinking about crypto. It's too big now to be a side hustle. So you apply to join a fund. Maybe a hedge fund, or a VC, doesn't matter. Foot in the door first. Your finance friends think you're a joke. You probably can't cut it in tradfi. Not smart enough to sling equities at the big shops with the Ivy League bros. Why else would you be here gambling on the same animal coins as your 13 year old cousin? Every once in a while, they still message you. "Crypto looks hot, what coin should I buy bro?". You never get invited to happy hour. You interact with people outside the industry less and less. You now have a vested interest for the industry to do well. So you start investing in startups. Some of the founders even seem sincere. You make some money from angel investments. You do your best to steer clear of scams and invest in things that excite you. Sometimes you get rugs, sometimes you get vaporware, sometimes you get home runs. Doesn't matter, you're labelled as a VC cuck now. Everything you do is a seen as a grift. Now even people in the space hate you. Fuck it, you say. Let's quit the fund and try to start your own project. Try build something for once. You find a co-founder, start an app. You've grown to love the movement, even if its people are toxic. Someone has to build something people actually use to keep the movement alive. You come up with an idea. It's actually not bad. You message a few VCs and angels, get a seed round going. They bite. You launch the project. Even launch a token, in true crypto fashion. Soon you start getting death threats from "community members". Where is the fucking airdrop you scammer? Why is your token price down you sellout? Damn. Building a product isn't easy. You reach out to your Web 2 friends for advice. But half of them don't take you seriously so they reply weeks later. The other half think you can't build a real product so have to resort to scamming retails with vaporware tokens. You're quite burnt out. Not sure why you're still in this industry. But you've made yourself quite unemployable in other fields, and you have a company to run. Maybe just sunset the product? But you can't. The token is live. Hundreds of people hold this now and you feel beholden to them. You feel stuck. Maybe you spend more time angel investing than building the app from now on. Travel the world. Less stress that way. You start an anon account to vent your frustrations.