It wasn’t long ago that “insiders” were still debating whether holding bitcoin was illegal. While there wasn't a single moment where crypto became legal, as the years went on it's legitimacy grew. The narrative is that crypto grows in 4 year spurts. While that may be reflected in the charts, the REAL battle for mindshare happens quietly in the background.

In the last few months crypto has been seemingly “hugged to death” by its first taste of real mainstream acceptance. This administration made crypto a priority, traditional finance is buying crypto, and the sitting president launched a memecoin. The markets were exuberant. Fast forward 4 months and the markets have retraced, and everyone is suffering whiplash. 

Did we earn it? The mainstream is knocking at our door, but the coins are down. There is disillusionment from the fact that the industry has stagnated in the last 3 years, but external factors moved the goal posts. Imagine stopping to tie your shoes in a marathon and as you stand up realizing someone moved the finish line to you. You would be rightly confused. 

There are A LOT of people trying to move the industry forward. For years builders have been improving and experimenting, hoping one day we would have the “killer app” that changes everything. Mainstream is now at the doorstep and builders are scrambling to fit the pieces together, wondering if they are still the ones that move the industry forward. With much uncertainty around long term value drivers, the market has entertained itself with short term games on vaporious term coins. Over a short period of time this has moved a considerable amount of money from long term builders to short term extractors.

We are unironically still early. While it may be tough to look at your opportunity cost over the past few years we are quite literally just getting started. And yes the “easy money” opportunities are getting fewer and fewer, but if you are a builder you weren't looking for the easy money anyway. The double edge sword of crypto is its irrationality. It makes millionaires of idiots and fools of geniuses. With mainstream comes rationality, which means the premium will swing back to smart people that build cool things.