To the Builders who are still persevering in the crypto industry

Original author: Kydo

Compiled by: Ken, Chaincatcher

Yesterday, a tweet struck a chord with people. It surfaced a shared yet silent despair—many of us no longer find joy in our work here.

If you’re not working on stablecoins, or if you’re not someone with a deep passion for financial markets, then you’re likely not finding much joy in the crypto space right now.

Worse yet, you watch as artificial intelligence develops at an astonishing speed and vigor, while your daily work seems to be stagnating. I know this because I felt that way at the time. That’s why I wrote that tweet.

The fact that this tweet resonated with so many people (I’ve received 60 private messages so far) indicates that many of you share the same feelings, just haven’t voiced them.

So, let me say out loud what everyone is thinking.

The Era of Selling Products to Crypto Developers is Over

In the last cycle, selling products to crypto developers was feasible. Data metrics were more important than revenue. Partner logos were more important than revenue. Vibe (community atmosphere) was more important than revenue. You were just a cost on their books, and everyone was willing to spend.

That paradigm has been dead for about 18 months. We really wish we could have realized it sooner.

Today, more and more people have reached a consensus: cryptocurrencies are only suitable for finance. Haseeb from Dragonfly has said this, Kyle from Multicoin has said this, and Toly from Solana has said this. Most of you probably think the same way, even if you won’t publicly admit it.

I understand why everyone has come to this conclusion. Most tokens are meme coins. They don’t own any assets and owe you no debts because what you can truly own is only on-chain status, which is extremely limited.

That’s also why crypto-native applications like trading and lending are the only two types that can genuinely make money on-chain.

But many of us are not working on DeFi. Many of us are building infrastructure for new use cases beyond DeFi. And here’s an uncomfortable truth: according to our analysis, the overall potential market size for this work is only about $200 to $300 million per year. That money has to be divided among hundreds of teams. The most successful teams might earn a few tens of millions of dollars. After so many years of maturation, that’s the ceiling.

If you’re building a company with venture capital potential, this leaves you with a very clear set of choices. If you want to serve crypto developers, the market is small. So, you either suit up and sell your infrastructure to traditional financial institutions, or like many others, shut down your business and pivot to AI.

Many people are leaving for AI because they understand their own strengths. They understand their team’s expertise. They also realize that their competitive advantage does not lie in adapting to the lengthy and complex B2B sales cycles of traditional finance. That’s why many of you are feeling lost right now.

The Dead End of Cryptocurrency and AI

So you turn your gaze to the only field that seems vibrant—the intersection of cryptocurrency and AI—and try to find a foothold. But the available options are not ideal.

Option one: traditional business model + AI, then launch a token. This token itself has no real utility, just like most other tokens. You’re basically just developing a regular product and slapping a financialized shell on it. This is demoralizing because you’ve been playing this game for five years.

Option two: decentralized AI infrastructure. Privacy, security, verifiability: this is the missionary route, and it’s an old paradigm. But I doubt this fits most of you: very few are willing to go through another lengthy "cult-building" exercise without immediate feedback and tangible revenue.

Option three: provide stablecoin infrastructure for AI agents. From a business perspective, this option is interesting, but the competition is extremely fierce. Circle, Stripe, and all the major stablecoin players are fully invested. In this field, where there’s no clear foothold to occupy, it’s frustrating for a startup to compete with them.

The Menu of Options and Why People Are Leaving

So, the actual options on the table today are as follows:

You can stay in the religious domain of cryptocurrency, striving for a resilient decentralized future.

You can suit up and join the ranks of the big players, preaching the gospel of stablecoins.

You can build a "selling shovels" tool company for the stablecoin ecosystem.

You can continue in DeFi: trading, lending, being the financial pipeline of the internet.

Or you can create a niche product that may not have the chance to become a billion-dollar investment but can bring real profits and genuine user satisfaction.

Beyond that, you don’t have many good choices. That’s why you’re likely to leave for AI. Honestly, I completely understand.

That’s why cryptocurrency is no longer that interesting.

That’s my diagnosis. This is the result of six months of feeling, analyzing, and pondering. If you just wanted to see an honest interpretation of "why the crypto space feels stagnant," you’ve finished reading. You can close this page now. Go take a walk and feel some real life.

But I can tell you: I have never been so passionate about my work as I am now. The last time I felt this way was probably when I first heard about what cryptocurrency is and what it can bring. And it’s not just my personal feeling—people around me feel the same way. So, if you want to hear a brief version of what I believe in, please keep reading.

Just remember, from here on out, I’m selling my beliefs.

What I Find Truly Interesting

For the past six months, I’ve been trying to answer the question: how to find a market that is large enough, with a clear business model rooted in the crypto space, and a product-oriented non-financial solution that can be used by both insiders and outsiders?

This is the point I keep returning to. Cryptocurrency is a superconductor of capital. Capital drives growth. The past problem has been that we’ve been fueling things that cannot grow—like pouring gasoline on ice and hoping it will burn brighter.

AI makes it possible to achieve growth and makes launching useful products unprecedentedly easy. Tasks that used to require a team of fifty can now be accomplished by one person. The cost of building a real product, a real business is collapsing. These products and businesses are growing rapidly, with revenue, real users, and real feedback loops. They need fuel to accelerate their growth. And cryptocurrency was invented as the best fuel mechanism for that purpose.

This is the only interesting question I see right now: how to leverage the superpower of cryptocurrency—instant, global, programmable capital formation—and direct it toward things that are genuinely growing? We believe the answer lies in Agent companies. To achieve this, we first need to allow tokens to "own" assets, and we happen to have been building this capability for the past five years. Now, we will turn it into a product to achieve this goal.

If this resonates with you, if you’re excited about our direction and want to build with us, or if you want to explore collaboration, please DM me.

If you think a friend would resonate with this, please share it with them. In my view, those who are not satisfied with the status quo right now are precisely the ones who should be building the future.