Four and a half years ago, I moved from Singapore to Los Angeles in the middle of the pandemic.

Now, I’ve always been a sports fan. I became a massive Manchester United supporter at age ten, even though I’d never been to the UK, let alone set foot in Manchester. Some people might chalk it up to their iconic treble in 1999, but truthfully? I chose them because, as a prepubescent child, “Liverpool” and “Arsenal” just sounded weird. Who would have thought liver and arse made up the names of actual cities?

Fast forward a couple of decades, and I’m starting a new life in LA during a global crisis. I’d always appreciated American football, ever since my one year of grad school in the US, but I never followed it too closely. Still, I made it a point to take Monday morning off every year to catch the Super Bowl while living in Singapore. A little ritual of cross-continental commitment, one can say.

But now that I lived in LA, I had to make a grave decision: Rams or Chargers?

I tried to stay neutral at first, but it didn’t last long. I found myself pulled toward the Chargers, for no real reason, other than the fact that their social media was witty and self-deprecating, Justin Herbert is one of the best quarterbacks of all time, and the team was clearly the underdog. [Spoiler alert: the Rams went on to win the Super Bowl that year.]

The point is, while fandom is sometimes inherited, it’s often chosen.

A feeling. A certain je ne sais quoi.

That very same irrationality governs crypto today.

Some bleed orange for Bitcoin. Others worship at the Church of Ethereum, with Vitalik as their unbothered, hoodie-clad messiah. Then there are the Solana maxis, devoted to the cause even when the token crashed to $8 during the post-FTX doomsday (it is trading at over $200 now).

And I’d be remiss not to mention Hyperliquid — an emerging exchange and protocol with a fiercely loyal user base, where tribalism has taken on an almost performance-art quality. There’s an ongoing campaign involving companies like Native Markets, PayPal, and more to claim its stablecoin ticker, USDH. But more than that, the community has turned repetition into ritual: in response to any discourse, they simply reply with one word.

“Hyperliquid,” they all say.

For those encountering crypto for the first time, all of this can feel... bizarre.

Never mind trying to wrap your head around the technology itself, or just the word crypto, which still carries heavy baggage. Now you’re being asked to understand why there are multiple blockchains, each with its own technical tradeoffs, cultural quirks, and — perhaps most confusingly — fervent communities that treat them like home teams.

In crypto, tribalism isn’t just brand loyalty. It’s identity, ideology, and a deep sense of belonging. The stakes aren't just higher because of speculation; they also feel higher because the emotional investment runs deeper.

Tech has always evolved in cycles. From Geocities to Squarespace. From MySpace and Vine to Facebook and TikTok. But nowhere along the way has tribal lines taken hold quite like it has in this new iteration of the internet.

You see, crypto isn’t just a new tech stack. It’s a new cultural architecture. With it comes a level of allegiance and narrative warfare that’s less “product preference” and more “choose your religion.”

To really get crypto, you have to come to terms with a certain kind of rational irrationality.

Just like there’s often no clear reason someone becomes a die-hard sports fan, the same is true here. People pick their chain, their token, their platform for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it's because they admire the founder, or maybe it's because a friend onboarded them to that particular ecosystem, or maybe it just felt right. The vibes are good, as we say. Whatever that means.

Maybe it's because crypto was born out of a manifesto, not a product roadmap. The Bitcoin whitepaper isn't just technical documentation. It was also a call to arms. A movement built by rebels, misfits, and internet-native idealists.

Crypto wasn't born out of Silicon Valley. It was raised in forums; a counterculture grown from anonymity and a shared distrust of the mainstream.

Now, tribalism isn’t inherently a bad thing. After all, some of the best storylines in sports are born from long-standing rivalries.

I should know. As a Chargers fan, I’m contractually obligated to hate the Raiders, despite not knowing a single Raiders fan personally. We like to say FTR: Family, Trust, and Respect… or more accurately, Fuck The Raiders. It’s utterly ridiculous. But it also raises the stakes on game day. Why not? Why wouldn’t you lean into a little “healthy competition” in the name of sport?

The same goes for crypto. In a perverse way, choosing sides makes the space more fun. More chaotic, sure, but also more alive. Because what’s the joy in winning, if there isn’t someone on the other side to lose?

But we all know that too much of a good thing can turn bad, fast.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about fights breaking out between Chargers and Raiders fans. Brutal, unnecessary, and completely missing the point. When people start getting scared to bring their families to games, you know that the friendly rivalry is now something darker. The tension dangerous, not electric.

Crypto again is no different. When party lines get drawn too deeply, the energy shifts. What may have once felt playful becomes performative, and very quickly, a form of engagement baiting. It becomes PvP. A zero-sum game. A never-ending cycle of subtweets, dunking, and “us vs. them” thinking... and frankly, entirely exhausting when most of us are just trying to stay the course and build something useful.

I’ve fallen into that trap myself. Not necessarily dismissing whole projects or ecosystems, but I've definitely rolled my eyes one too many times. I've let myself get caught up in the drama, pulling up to X with a bag of popcorn, spending too much time reading threads that go nowhere.

It’s easy to forget we’re all still playing for the same league.

But here’s the irony: this mindset, and all the rivalry and trash talk is exactly what helps crypto grow.

Just like people tune in to watch Celtics vs. Lakers, or El Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the drama is part of the draw. It sparks curiosity. It gives people something to root for. And it keeps the conversation going. The louder the discourse, the more people start to pay attention.

Of course, everything comes with tradeoffs. The more attention the space gets, the more critics it attracts. More users means more skeptics. More builders means more grifters.

It doesn't stop here. For all of crypto's infighting, there is another bigger, larger divide. The one between crypto "natives" and crypto "outsiders", often referred to as normies. And if you are a normie, you are basically a Muggle in Harry Potter terms.

It’s not just which chain you’re building on. It’s how long you’ve been around. Have you deployed a contract? Have you been rugged? Have you paid $200 in gas fees for a transaction that failed to go through? Have you even bridged to an L2 before basic UIs existed?

There’s an unspoken rite of passage. A belief that crypto stripes have to be earned, not given.

And when big companies enter the space, especially those who haven’t made their way up the dev ladder, they’re often met with side-eyes and skepticism. Even if they are well-intentioned. Even if their presence helps legitimize the space.

That’s the paradox. What crypto not-so-secretly wants is validation from the outside world: institutions, enterprises, even governments. I mean, hey, if it's good for our bags, it's good for our bags.

But, crypto also doesn’t want to feel like it’s being co-opted in the process.

And I get it. We’re a weird crew, us crypto folks. We are excessively allergic to suits, and way too obsessive about vibes. I mean, if your PFP isn’t a mfer that looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint, or a pixelated CryptoDickbutt, are you even doing it right?

But we also know: if this space is going to grow up, it needs more than inside jokes and anons.

It needs products that scale. But it also needs people willing to bridge – not just across chains, but across cultures.

One thing is undeniable however: crypto is at an inflection point.

The infrastructure has quietly leveled up. Transaction fees are lower thanks to scaling solutions and L2s. Tooling has matured too: account abstraction is making wallets smarter, while developer kits like viem and wagmi have made it easier than ever to build rich onchain experiences. At the center of it all, embedded wallet infrastructure like Privy (shameless plug) helps to further abstract away crypto’s underlying complexity, so that users no longer need to juggle seed phrases and browser extensions just to interact with an app.

We’re finally entering an era where crypto can be useful, not just speculative. The experience can now be intuitive, as opposed to intimidating. The headlines no longer centered on price swings and scams, but rather on real-world adoption, or corporate milestones – like IPOs, acquisitions, and major partnerships.

The drama may still be loud, but it’s no longer the whole story.

That said, whether you’re launching a new app, protocol, or community, understanding this nuance is key: you’re probably going to piss at least one person off.

Crypto might be built on the principle of credible neutrality, but in practice, there’s no such thing as emotional neutrality. Not yet.

Even the most infrastructure-focused teams eventually brush up against tribal lines, whether they choose to integrate with a certain chain, partner with a certain player, or even just shipping something that challenges the status quo.

Some teams manage to thread the needle, weaving across ecosystems without unraveling their core beliefs. But most of us? We'll still end up with a chain of choice. A token we want to send to the moon. A stack we think is superior. And most importantly, an energy we can vibe with.

And that’s okay. While tribal lines are deep in crypto, so too is its purpose.

We sometimes forget that all teams win when the sport itself wins. All it took was one Taylor Swift for NFL viewership to soar through the roof.

You don’t have to root for the Chiefs (another Chargers rival, unfortunately). But the point stands: we are simply too early to stake everything on one player, one chain, or even one ideology.

There’s room for all of crypto to win, so long as we keep perspective and build with intention.

When you zoom out, the bigger picture is this: for as unserious as this space can be at times, the technology is undeniably serious. crypto is already reshaping how the world interacts and transacts, right before our eyes.

It may be a while before that future feels wholly familiar.

Until then — lean in. Get weird. Ask questions. Get your hands dirty. Give, not take. Contribute, not extract.

The deeper you go, the more it makes sense. The more you care, the more you belong. And over time, if you let it, crypto will make space for you too.

P.S. FTR.