High quality young people fleeing the cryptocurrency industry: a 'secondary labor market' disguised as high salaries Today I talked to an employee of a Crypto card project and found out that he had already resigned and joined the AI industry a few weeks ago. There are many similar phenomena around me, which is also a very obvious trend I have observed recently: not only has the Multicoin joint venture left, but many high-quality and top-notch talents of the same age are rapidly losing from the Crypto industry I don't think this can be simply attributed to "the price of the coin has fallen" or "the bear market is unbearable". Compared to the cycle, from my perspective, what really drives away these smart peers is the extremely fatal structural flaw in the career planning of this industry, the complete locking of the upward channel Even if they survive the layoffs in the cryptocurrency industry, the reason why they won't stay in the industry can be summarized in one sentence: if they can't have the freedom to speculate, they will still have to go through those days Two questions lead to the third question: Where does the liquidity of the cryptocurrency market come from? secondary market Where does the secondary market occur? exchange Does the industry need high-quality young talents to join? The third question should not require lengthy arguments. At least based solely on GitHub data, since the beginning of 2025, the weekly code submissions for encryption projects have decreased from approximately 850000 to 210000, and the number of active developers has dropped to around 4600 So it can be clearly seen that in the current cryptocurrency circle, apart from top exchanges, there is almost no real career ladder. But even if one dedicates their youth to the exchange, there are very few people who can survive for 2-3 years. Entering at this stage, one cannot obtain the explosive options of early employees, and has long lost the opportunity to directly "buy out youth" and achieve financial freedom through industry dividends (of course, not considering some mouse warehouse editors and a certain chain operator who has already resigned) Using the binary labor market theory proposed by economists Doeringer and Piore, everything becomes extremely clear: the employment base of the crypto industry is essentially a secondary labor market disguised by high salaries In traditional major labor markets such as top financial institutions, tech giants, or mature consulting firms, there exists a long-term implicit contract between employers and employees that provides not only decent salaries and social status, but also the core of compound interest accumulation of knowledge and skills. In that environment, career development presents a spiral upward trend: personal capital (abilities, networks, cognition) continues to increase over time. An industry expert can use their core skills accumulated in the past few years to cross over and switch to the consulting industry to see specific tracks, or enter the strategic investment department of large enterprises But in the secondary labor market of Crypto, even if the salary may not be low, you still have to face extreme job instability, social status marginalization, and extreme lack of promotion mechanisms This leads to the most fatal question: Where else can you cross over from the cryptocurrency circle? The answer is cruel: there is no way out. The so-called "professional skills" accumulated in the Crypto industry, whether it is seeking KOLs for TGE promotion, writing smart contracts, Twitter operations, or scanning chains to speculate on memes, have almost no reuse value in the traditional business world. The non transferability of skills makes the experience of working in the cryptocurrency industry more like a gap in career history In today's traditional job market, which has not yet been completely engulfed by AI, top young talents will inevitably be counted as a long-term development account. When the expectation of sudden wealth is smoothed out, leaving only unusable dragon slaying skills and career resumes that can be reset at any time, the accelerated exit of high-quality individuals is an extremely rational stop loss strategy In this highly volatile dark forest, if one cannot transform into a self-sufficient, absolutely rational super individual (independent trader or investor) who only wants to sell their time as a worker, then this is undoubtedly the biggest short selling of their youth, and it is also the core reason why those excellent peers are unwilling to continue working in Crypto Industry leaders should pay more attention to the issue of talent loss. Instead of choosing what is right, it is better to eliminate incorrect answers first