# The Great Decoupling

By [Olokoji](https://paragraph.com/@olokoji) · 2025-09-24

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![The stronger the belief, the better the chart.](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/6ad5a9aa84e727f000d510d9053c384cb62d33997e776f563188321b17f6ece1.png)

The stronger the belief, the better the chart.

I remember sitting in my cramped room, the loud whirling of my standing fan was the only companion in the quiet of dawn. Screens bathed the space in pale blue light. One monitor was squeezed with price charts; my phone was open to the crypto news feed, refreshing relentlessly. It was the day of Ethereum’s Merge, the long-awaited shift from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. It was going to be brazy day full of activities, esp on charts; I was so sure 🤡🤡.  
I expected the kind of movement you see in stock markets: major upgrades usually jolt price—an immediate upward move, maybe 5–10%. But as I watched the charts, ETH price barely move, I was confused. The Merge had completed, and yet, ETH’s price remained largely flat—“unchanged in the hours following ‘The Merge’”, according to Investopedia. The realization hit me harder than any candlestick chart. I had traded that day with the intuitive assumption that tokens would behave like stocks: product up, price up. But the market seemed to follow a different script, one that wasn’t written in revenue models or quarterly reports but in flows, narratives, and tribes.

That was my first realization of what I now call the great decoupling: the widening gap between product utility and token price. 2. The Central Question The realization that if this had been a Web2 market, things would have looked very different. And here lies the striking contrast. In Web2, good company news generally moves the needle. A feature rollout, a new acquisition, a record-breaking earnings call — each one tends to move through stock prices almost immediately. But in Web3, the logic is far murkier. A token can rally 500% on the back of a meme, only to ignore months of genuine product traction. Conversely, protocols with thriving adoption, revenue models often see their token stagnate, leaving founders puzzled and token holders frustrated.

So here’s the paradox I want us to explore together: Why does product utility map so cleanly to price in Web2, but so unevenly in Web3? And more importantly: what does this tell us about ourselves — our psychology, our social rituals, our ways of creating meaning in markets?

**Psychology of Markets: Web2 vs Web3**
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One of the most important thing i learnt is that markets are never just rational machines. They are emotional theaters where human psychology plays out. When we compare Web2 and Web3, we wil uncover very different underlying psychologies.

### Web2 is anchored in Security

As David Hume observed, much of human behavior is guided not by pure reason but by habit — the tendency to expect the future to resemble the past. We learn to link events together, like cause and effect, even when we cannot prove the connection. This “habit of continuity” is a great guide of life, and it carries directly into how markets behave. In the traditional markets, investors lean on intitution’s audited earnings, GAAP/IFRS, guidance, regulator oversight, analyst coverage.

The overall purpose for this is Continuity; the expectation that tomorrow will look like today, only slightly better. This behaviour is rooted in what Max Weber called rational-legal authority. This means, we trust systems because rules, procedures, and roles that they operate on are clear. So in the stock markets, when there is earning/ guidance report it usually leads to near- immediate repricing, or when there are product roll outs, investors update their expectations about how much money the company will make, and the stock price adjusts and When big deals happen or new rules are announced, investors recalculate the company’s future value and risks, and the price moves accordingly.

### Web3’s Belief (Identity, Narrative, and Reflexivity)

In Web3 markets, price is often less a reflection of what has already been built and more a stage where collective expectations play out. **Tokens move because people believe they will move — and that belief itself becomes part of the market’s reality.** Tokens are financial assets and social objects. They carry identity (tribes), ideology (decentralization), status (early believer), and lottery optionality (the quick flip). Instead of rational-legal authority, Web3 leans on tribal legitimacy.

This dynamic echoes what George Soros described as reflexivity: markets don’t merely mirror reality, they actively shape it. In Web3, reflexivity is amplified, compelling narrative attracts attention, price rises, and the rising price makes the story seem truer which pulls in even more believers. This cycle feeds itself until it either burns out or stabilizes into a new equilibrium.

![Chart cycle in Web3](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/99c9fd2c16e66832694cc7c8ef5403c4809b11cad48e176308e989841b1732cf.png)

Chart cycle in Web3

In this sense, Web3 markets are less about continuity, as in traditional finance, and more about cycles of belief that feed on themselves. This is why product utility, acquisitions, or even major upgrades often fail to move tokens in the same way. The reason is simple: most tokens are not stocks. They don’t give holders a direct claim on profits or revenues. Even when there are cash flows, they’re usually indirect. Whether a token captures value depends heavily on its design, things like fee burns, revenue-sharing, or staking models. And because these designs vary (and can be weak or poorly aligned), product success doesn’t always translate into token price. Instead, Beliefs and narratives often the dominant psyche of the web3 market.

What is Belief?
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If continuity is the heartbeat of Web2, then belief is the lifeblood of Web3. Belief to me mean more than optimism or speculation; I believe belief 🌚 is the deeper systems of trust, meaning, and imagination that people carry with them when they buy and hold tokens.

In the absence of audited earnings or quarterly calls, Web3 relies on collective convictions: cultural, ideological, speculative, and governance-driven. These beliefs are not abstract. They are lived. They show up in Discord channels, Telegram groups, memes, and price charts. They anchor communities during bear markets and ignite manias in bull runs. And like all belief systems, they are messy, contradictory, but powerful enough to move billions.

![Stack of belief](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3f0e1656992045feed028d2c7d19ef0147285f9668a2c51f7688f80953fcd838.png)

Stack of belief

Let me walk through what I call the belief stack of Web3.

### 1\. Cultural Belief

Cultural belief is a shared story people live inside of. It’s the feeling of “we” that forms around a symbol, a joke, a hero, a place, or a promise. It isn’t mainly about facts; it’s about belonging. These beliefs provide meaning, social order, and a sense of identity for individuals within a culture, shaping their outlook on everything from health, code of conduct, behaviours to social justice.

Some examples include religious views, moral principles, customs like holidays and festivals, and even food choices. We recognize each other through signals (logos, slang, rituals), and those signals tell us who’s “in” and what behavior gets status.

From close examination, most strong cultural beliefs follow a pattern there is usually a—  
**Spark**  
It has been said and observed that every culture begins with a spark: a moment that ignites an emotion and makes people say, “this is us and i believe.” A single event that shifts things from ordinary to unforgettable.

Lets take a look at a common example, FC Barcelona. For many, the transfer of Johan Cruyff in the 1970s was that moment. Cruyff didn’t just score goals; he brought a philosophy. At first, [the drama behind his transfer was insane](https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/news/3619586/50-years-on-how-johan-cruyff-came-to-fc-barcelona). He forced a move from Ajax, a then european giant to FC Barcelona who were barely domestic giants. The whole transfer saga made his coming more divine. His presence planted the seed of what became tiki-taka, and from there Barça embraced the identity of Més que un club in their playing style— “More than a club.” That spark is remembered decades later as the turning point that shaped a cultural belief still alive today.

In Web3, I’ve seen sparks emerge in various ways. Dogecoin is the clearest example. It began as a meme coin, a Shiba Inu slapped onto a Bitcoin parody, was little more than an internet joke. When Elon Musk tweeted: “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto.” That single line turned Doge from a curiosity into a conviction. People began to see it not just as a joke, but as a populist flag, it became a coin that belonged to everyone, not just institutions. That moment sparked belief in Doge, giving millions the permission to laugh, to dream, and to rally together.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1fa5ed26f808fbba195f03b2803d7f486c0dd5bcf93d9ba6fe5e38147fcca568.png)

**Symbol**  
A spark by itself can fade. What keeps fanning the flame to keep it alive is a symbol. Think of symbol something the community can point to and say, “this represents us.” For Barça, the crest, tiki-taka, the colors, and the motto— Més que un club became the rallying points. They compressed identity into visuals and words that everyone recognized instantly.

In Dogecoin’s case, the goofy Shiba Inu face became that flag. Add the ticker $DOGE and the rocket emoji 🚀, and suddenly anyone could signal their allegiance with a single post. Symbols matter because they let people see themselves in each other. They make belief visible, and once belief is visible, it spreads.

**Rituals**  
_“...rituals provide a framework for stability when you are trying to find answers.”_ — Deborah Norville

Belief doesn’t stay alive unless it’s practiced, and these practices are called Rituals. It is what turn ideas into lived experiences. Cultural belief depeens through repeated actions, they are acts of belonging which people who belief do to show their belief or conviction. They remind the group who they are; Barcelona fans sing chants every matchday, hold tifos, defend their players and they wear the jersey like armor. They attend matches whether barca win or lose. They do these act because they believe in the culture of “mes que un club” and they will continue to perform this acts until they lose the belief in that culture. It’s not just about football; it’s about acts that say, “we belong here”.

With $Doge, rituals were lighter but no less powerful. They saw it as an obligation to have a shiba inu PFP, they tipped $Doge to strangers online. They repeated the phrase “to the moon” across forums and Twitter threads. They held through crashes and celebrated pumps with the same memes, over and over again. These rituals didn’t create new technology, but they created belonging — and belonging is what kept people showing up even when the charts looked ugly or beautiful.

**Status & Roles**  
Every culture creates a social order. Some are remembered as pioneers, others become the loudest voices, and many imitate them to gain recognition. Barça had Cruyff, then Ronaldinho, Pep Guardiola, Xavi, Iniesta, **Messi 🐐**— figures who weren’t just players but icons. Fans organized themselves around these heroes, and these heroes became icons that keep the fan believing. For Example, the club will not always win or do well but the faith in these icons will get the fans to come back and cheer for the team.

Dogecoin had its “OG shibes.” Those who mined early, those who made the funniest memes, or those who simply held the longest became legends in the community. Elon Musk was nicknamed _“The Dogefather.”_ He wasn’t the founder, but his public backing made him a cultural figurehead. Status mattered because it gave the movement shape. It told newcomers who to follow, who to listen to, and what behaviors earned respect.

**Story Reinforcement**  
Finally, no cultural belief survives without its story being retold. Sparks fade unless they become myths, and myths are what make cultures feel timeless. Barcelona’s story — of being more than a club, of representing Catalan pride, of playing beautiful football — has been retold across documentaries, interviews, and generations of fans. The story sustains the culture. Dogecoin’s story has been told and retold as well. The media called it “the people’s crypto.” Community members kept pumping out memes and jokes, each one reminding everyone that $Doge wasn’t just a token — it was proof that a joke could become a movement. Over time, the story hardened into a kind of inevitability: Dogecoin was no longer just another coin; it was a cultural artifact of the internet age.

In the crypto (Web3) markets, Like the Doge case study above, what moved the price wasn’t a balance sheet or the premise of continuity or the utility of $Doge but it was the millions of coordinated micro-rituals that created a crowd, a language, and then a market.

![Life cycle of cultural belief](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1d8c4f2ade6b8191085c1df6727f8ee7042e27acd51050b6d5716dd5c5980b96.png)

Life cycle of cultural belief

Cultural belief is durable if the rituals keep paying social dividends (recognition, fun, identity). It fades when the story stops being retold, when rituals dry up, or when status games turn zero-sum and hostile. In markets: culture holds floors in bad times and supercharges upside in good times, until the flywheel loses energy. Cultural belief turns tokens into social flags first and financial assets second. When the flag is flying high, price will climb even without fundamentals. When the flag droops, fundamentals alone rarely save it. In Web3, culture is a liquidity engine—because belonging is a reason to buy, to hold, and to show up together.

### Ideological Belief

An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones”.

For the context of this piece, Ideological belief is what happens when a market position becomes a moral position. As Nietzsche put it, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” That is why ideology is a market driver: it turns volatility into endurance and price charts into a kind of pilgrimage. You see ideology everywhere in daily life. People pay more for fair-trade coffee because they believe workers deserve dignity. Engineers contribute to open-source on weekends because software should be free to inspect and improve. Privacy advocates choose encrypted messengers; climate activists ride bikes in cities built for cars; some folks eat vegan for reasons beyond nutrition. None of these choices are purely about utility. They are about the world we want to live in and acting today as if it already exists.

Let’s take a look at web3 biggest tokens, Bitcoin and ETH and examine how ideology as a driver for holders of these tokens

**Bitcoin — The Sovereignty Ethic**  
Bitcoin’s ideology is simple to say and hard to shake: money should not be at the mercy of states or banks. Fixed supply, predictable issuance, censorship resistance, self-custody are not product features so much as principles. [The halving](https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769#:~:text=Bitcoin%20halving%20is%20an%20event,block%20reward%20to%203.125%20BTC.) (a scheduled drop in new supply roughly every four years) functions like a civic holiday. It reminds us that the rules won’t bend for anyone, not even for convenience.

Day-to-day, that ideology looks like people learning cold storage, writing seed phrases, and tolerating the discomfort of self-custody because sovereignty matters more than ease. It looks like HODLing through brutal drawdowns because the point isn’t next quarter’s return; it’s the next century’s monetary standard. Even debates inside Bitcoin (fees, ordinals, scaling) are framed against that fixed star. This Ideology stretches time horizons. Holders behave less like customers and more like keepers of a monument; **BITCOIN MAXIS**. That slows capitulation in bad times, amplifies conviction in good times, and makes adoption feel less like growth hacking and more like a slow constitutional ratification. Price still moves with liquidity, of course, but the behavior around the asset—the refusal to sell, the reverence for the schedule—comes from belief, not spreadsheets.

**Ethereum — The Credible Neutrality Ethic**  
Ethereum’s ideology is different: the world should have a neutral, programmable settlement layer where anyone can build and coordinate without permission. That sounds abstract until you live with it. A DAO votes and ships a grant in hours; a game experiments with on-chain assets; a researcher raises funds transparently; an artist mints, sells, and pays collaborators by contract. The “belief” is that coordination should be public, programmable, and upgradeable. Day-to-day, that ideology looks like builders obsessing over clients, rollups, account abstraction; researchers publishing openly; users tolerating some UX friction because neutrality and openness come first. The “ultrasound money” phrase wasn’t marketing, it was ideology codified into token mechanics and then narrated back to the community. The recent “Believe in SomETHing” phrase is also a direct allusion of the ETH Ideology. This Ideology keeps the builder base engaged through market cycles and makes upgrades legible to the public as milestones in a shared project, not just “feature releases.” ETH still responds to macro and flows, but its community’s willingness to fund public goods, to migrate to better security models, and to endure change comes from conviction in Ethereum’s role—not just its price.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/a2d5f928a4167932d585a62e8464deb508957f6cca462ea799ef5f8770e41d65.png)

**What Ideology Does That Utility Can’t**  
Utility convinces you to use a system. Ideology convinces you to stand by it. In both Bitcoin and Ethereum, belief organizes behavior: it slows panic, lengthens holding periods, attracts contributors, and supplies a story that people can act inside of. That story doesn’t replace liquidity or market structure, but it explains why these two assets have communities that persist when others evaporate. In Web3, ideology is the difference between a token that’s merely useful and a token that becomes a cause. And causes, unlike products, can survive the parts of the market that reason alone cannot.

### Speculative Belief

At the core of Web3, speculation is not an accident — it is the driving force. Strip away the memes, the ideology, even the tech, and you’ll still find the same heartbeat: the belief that money multiplies here faster than anywhere else. Speculation, in its simplest sense, is the act of betting today because you believe someone will pay more tomorrow. Generally in life, people don’t pick what they find most beautiful, but what they think others will think is beautiful. In crypto, this is more pronouced: tokens move not just on what is, but on what people expect others to expect. That recursive loop is speculation. Every cycle is fueled by the promise that new tokens, new categories, or new memes can deliver life-changing returns. Traders rotate not because the fundamentals changed, but because the speculative circle is moving.

This is why speculation often explains more short-term token movement than utility ever can. Speculation isn’t irrational here; it is the market’s operating system. Pump.fun and the Meme Trenches Nowhere is this clearer than on Solana’s Pump.fun, the memecoin launchpad that has become both casino and culture. Each day, thousands of tokens are minted with no promise of utility. They exist purely for speculation: can this ticker, this meme, this joke, become the next runner?  
This isn’t confined to Solana, across chains, memecoins are ecosystems of speculation. But examining Pump.fun emphasizes that the product is not utility, it’s permissionless speculation itself.

**Why Speculation Persists**  
It’s tempting to dismiss speculation as noise, but it persists because it offers something ideology and culture cannot: quick, personal gratification.

![Features of speculative belief; hope, action, proof](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c3524992f5561d69b26b1c0a70de11dce0ba39b730c289b4131f7e693085f53a.png)

Features of speculative belief; hope, action, proof

Speculation gives markets velocity. Even those who “believe in the tech” know that liquidity comes first from traders looking for profit. Without them, narratives don’t catch, communities don’t scale, and products don’t get noticed. Speculation is the accelerant.

**Speculative Belief as Culture**  
Ironically, speculation itself has become a culture in Web3. Being “early” is a status badge. Calling “the next 100x” earns followers. Surviving the trenches of Pump.fun or “aping in” to a meme coin is a ritual of belonging. Screenshots of wild wins are retold like folk tales. Speculation creates cycles, but cycles create myths, and these myths are sticky: even after crashes, people return because the story of outsized gains is too powerful to ignore.

We have to look at speculation not as flaw of Web3 markets — but as one of its foundation. It explains why liquidity floods into memecoins faster than into infrastructure. It explains why tokens with no revenue can outperform tokens with cash flows. It also explains why new traders keep arriving: not for ideology, not for culture, but for the hope of multiplying their money. That hope, endlessly retold, is itself a belief system. And in Web3, belief moves markets.

### Governance Belief

Governance, in its essence, is the process of deciding who gets to decide. It is the set of rules, procedures, and institutions through which a group organizes itself, distributes authority, and manages collective resources. In political life, it is parliaments, constitutions, and courts. In companies, it is boards, shareholders, and executives. In communities, it is rituals, councils, and consensus. At its heart, governance answers the question: whose voice counts, and how? In Web3, tokens have extended this ancient question into blockchain space. A governance token is not simply an investment vehicle; it is a credential of influence. Holding one says, I have a say in what happens here. The belief that tokens confer power, whether over fees, emissions, treasury spending, or upgrades has become one of the drivers of token behavior.

Governance belief anchors communities through participation. While cultural belief creates belonging and speculative belief creates velocity, governance belief creates a sense of stewardship. People don’t just want upside; they want agency. That agency takes different forms, for example;

**MakerDAO (MKR)**: MKR holders have real influence over collateral choices, stability fees, and the direction of DAI. Price is tied not only to speculation but to the credibility of MKR holders as stewards of the system.  
**Curve (veCRV)**: The “Curve Wars” showed governance as power. Holding veCRV meant influencing liquidity incentives, and entire DeFi ecosystems rotated around this. Tokens like Convex rose because they aggregated governance power. The belief that my token controls flows made CRV valuable even when fundamentals were flat.  
**Uniswap (UNI)**: UNI’s price has often lagged its product dominance precisely because the community debates whether governance will ever activate the “fee switch.” The belief in governance, not the governance itself, drives how people hold UNI.

Governance tokens perform because people believe their votes shape value capture. When that belief is strong, holders are sticky; when it weakens, tokens drift into irrelevance.

In Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), this belief is also very prominent. DAOs are groups whose very existence is defined by token-based governance. Whether it’s a protocol DAO, a service DAO, or an investment DAO, the promise is the same: your tokens are your vote, and your vote is your power. But DAOs also show the fragility of governance belief. Some communities thrive — transparent, active, aligned. Others stall when voters disengage, whales dominate, or proposals become ceremonial. The difference often comes down to whether the community truly believes their governance token matters.

Governance, then, is not only a set of smart contracts. It is a belief system, the conviction that distributed power can produce better, fairer, or at least more legitimate outcomes. If that belief is alive, the token has gravity. If it dies, governance becomes a drama theater.

**Governance Belief as a Market Force**  
When people hold tokens not just for price but for voice, tokens behave differently. Holders are less likely to sell because selling is giving up influence (which is usually leverage over treasury flows, incentives, or protocol direction). This is why governance battles often coincide with price spikes — not because utility changed overnight, but because control became contested.

If cultural belief is about identity, ideological belief is about principle, and speculative belief is about profit, governance belief is about power. In the end, governance tokens are not merely technical tools; they are embodiments of a very old human instinct: the desire to be counted, to be heard, and to have a say in shaping the commons.

Belief is a Market Fuel
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Together, these beliefs form the belief stack of Web3. Unlike Web2, where continuity rules, Web3 thrives on layered convictions: cultural, ideological, speculative, and governance. Each can ignite price, even in the absence of “hard fundamentals.” And that is the paradox — in Web3, it’s not just what the product does that matters, but what the token means to those who believe.

We cannot keep shouting “utility!” as though it is the lifeblood of tokenomics, we have to view tokenomics and product utility as seperate concepts and not inter-dependent systems. Utility alone does not guarantee price performance in crypto, because tokens are not equities. They are hybrids, they are part financial asset, part social symbol, part flow instrument. So without clarity, builders, and founders risk disillusionment, and would build without considering the belief factor. By studying this systematically — psychologically, sociologically, and empirically — we can begin to answer critical questions:

**_What actually moves tokens?  
When does product matter, and when doesn’t it?  
How can projects design tokens and products as distinct yet complementary systems?_**

Conclusion
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Markets are reflections of us. They mirror our fears, our hopes, our myths. Web2 stocks reflect our need for stability; Web3 tokens reflect our hunger for identity, our tribal instincts, our love of narrative and gains. The decoupling of product and price in Web3 is not a bug — it is a feature of who we are. And understanding it means understanding not just markets, but ourselves. In the coming months, i will periodically try to map the forces that move tokens, to compare them with the old logic of stocks, and to ask what this means for the future of value creation. Because somewhere in that gap between product and price lies the truth about what we are really trading: not just assets, but meaning itself.

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*Originally published on [Olokoji](https://paragraph.com/@olokoji/the-great-decoupling-2)*