the hardest thing about crypto is the mental shift it asks for.

most people still think about money the way they think about a wire transfer. there’s a sender, a receiver, and a bunch of ledgers somewhere in between — credits, debits, everyone keeping score in their own books. that’s how the world’s financial plumbing works. you send money from the U.S. to the U.K., it bounces through a few correspondent banks, gets debited and credited across different ledgers, and the system balances. it’s messy, it’s slow, but it makes sense in a mental model built on trusting institutions.

crypto breaks that model completely. there’s one global ledger, and everyone can see it.
no middlemen, no hidden books, no 3-day settlement. just code, consensus, and instant finality. that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around not because they’re dumb, but because it rewires how you think about ownership and movement of value. even people in traditional finance struggle with this. it’s like trying to explain the internet to someone who’s only ever used a fax machine.

and that’s really the point, crypto is new mental operating system.

remember when the internet was new?

people didn’t get it either. they heard about “websites” and “email”. most people weren’t chatting on irc or reading blogs in 1997. it took a whole generation growing up online before social media exploded. the technology didn’t change as much as the people did. once everyone had spent enough time in the digital world, everything clicked.

crypto’s in that same early stage. the infrastructure is mostly built, the tools exist, but the mindset hasn’t caught up. you can’t shortcut that part. a new generation needs to grow up thinking wallet-first — to them, self-custody, tokens, and onchain identity won’t feel weird. it’ll just be normal.

once that happens, the same way the internet became invisible, crypto will too.

that’s why, when i walk around the world today, all i see are tokens waiting to exist.

i’m at a restaurant, and i tip a waitress 20%. she’s great — thoughtful, sharp, clearly going somewhere. why can’t i buy her token instead? why can’t i invest in her long-term potential, not just reward the moment?

i meet a college founder who’s maybe too early but has the spark. why not own a small piece of his journey?

i see a street performer crushing it on a sidewalk (he might be the next john mayer). why not buy his token, back him early, and let the world see that belief onchain?

that’s what makes this powerful. everything’s public, everything’s open. if a famous person or investor buys that performer’s token it’s a signal. suddenly everyone who follows that person can see it. that’s how opportunity spreads. that’s how attention turns into capital.

there’s not enough opportunity in the world right now.

private markets are gated. public markets are closed off. most people are stuck with whatever their geography or background gives them. crypto flips that. it makes everything permissionless. it gives everyone a shot. anyone can issue a token. anyone can participate.

that’s the part people miss when they call it “speculation.” sure, speculation happens and it always has. but underneath it, this is about unlocking potential. some people aren’t great at selling themselves. some are shy. some don’t fit neatly into the current system. tokens and onchain networks give them another way to show what they’re capable of and to get rewarded for it.

that’s how economies grow. the internet expanded connectivity and access to information. crypto expands monetization and access to ownership. every time access expands, gdp grows. you get new markets, new business models, new ways to earn. it’s the same curve, just one layer deeper.

so yeah, maybe crypto’s taken longer than people expected. it’s a shift in how people think about value itself. you can’t expect everyone to wake up one day and understand it — it takes years of slow rewiring.

the next generation will get it by default. they’ll grow up using wallets before bank accounts, they’ll see tokens the way we see stocks or likes or followers. it’ll just make sense to them.

and when that happens, crypto won’t feel like crypto anymore. it’ll just feel like the world — fast, open, permissionless, global. the way it always should’ve been.