Author: Connor Dempsey
Compiled by Jiahuan, ChainCatcher
The crypto revolution has indeed happened. It's just not at all what we originally expected.
In 2017, when I first entered the space, the industry consensus was that this technology would change everything.
Government-issued fiat currency will be replaced by decentralized currencies. Blockchain will eliminate rent-seeking intermediaries between every transaction. Power will shift from corporations to users.
These almost didn't happen. But other things did.
So far, I’ve spent eight years at four crypto companies: @circle, @MessariCrypto, @coinbase, @crossmint.
I watched this asset class grow from less than $1 billion to over $4 trillion, going through multiple rounds of speculative bubbles and a crisis that nearly triggered a systemic collapse. I found that what this industry actually built is far more interesting than what was predicted back then.
Before starting my fifth job, I want to document these eight years and share my thoughts on where I think it’s headed next.
False prosperity (2017–18 token issuance frenzy)
In early 2017, I came across an explanation of Bitcoin in a book and was instantly hooked. Soon after, I read every related book I could find, then made a plan: move to Singapore and write a blog documenting this new technology that fascinated me.
At the time, I didn’t realize I was at the tail end of a massive speculative bubble surrounding "early token financing," a model that allowed anyone to raise funds online by selling digital tokens to investors.
Ethereum is the main battlefield for all of this.
In November 2017, I posted a beginner-friendly guide to Ethereum that went viral on Reddit. It was right at the peak of the bubble, which burst a month later.
Looking back at that article now, it feels more like a time capsule—capturing the optimism of that year and predicting a future that never arrived.
The prediction from that year
The core idea of the article: Blockchain networks like Ethereum can be used to build new types of consumer applications.
The value created by most consumer-grade apps (like Facebook and Uber) flows to large corporations and a small group of investors. In contrast, the value created by these new types of applications is shared collectively by early participants (and early token investors).
The article envisions building a "decentralized Uber" on Ethereum, where early users and drivers earn tokens for each trip completed, giving them a stake in the network. This more fairly rewards early believers who helped bootstrap the network.
A commendable goal on paper. But the decentralized revolution ultimately stumbled badly.
What actually happened
A speculative frenzy reminiscent of the 2001 dot-com bubble.
Ethereum has proven to be the most efficient crowdfunding platform in history, raising $22 billion from investors worldwide across more than 3,000 token issuance projects.
But just like in 2001, the underlying technology is far from capable of supporting the wildly overvalued use cases assigned to it.
Worse still, this model undermines the normal incentive structure between investors and builders: builders can raise $10 million overnight with nothing more than an idea.
Investors receive only tokens, which only appreciate after the project is built. However, the builders also retain tokens and can cash out for profit from day one, removing their incentive to build useful products.
Founders and early investors have made huge profits, while inexperienced investors have been left behind. Although there are some genuine individuals who truly want to build something, this model has unfortunately become a breeding ground for greed, fraud, and exploiting retail investors.
Just like every speculative bubble over the past few hundred years.
Building from the Ruins (Circle, 2018-19)
My wallet kept shrinking day by day. I landed an entry-level marketing role at Circle in early 2018, leveraging the small amount of clout I’d built up on Reddit.
At the time, Circle had been in operation for four years. It had a portfolio of unprofitable consumer-facing applications (investing, payments, trading) and a quiet over-the-counter trading desk that was printing money and keeping the company afloat.
For the next two years, the entire industry staggered through the hangover of token mania. Most projects were abandoned, and most tokens dropped to zero. The atmosphere was terrible.
But it was also at this time that the seeds of the next crypto revival were sown.
The focus this time is no longer on consumer applications, but on reshaping finance through the internet.
USD and DeFi
Dollar-backed "stablecoins" were originally created to allow traders to easily switch between crypto positions. They maintain a value pegged to $1 through reserves of dollars and U.S. Treasuries at a 1:1 ratio.
Tether's USDT led the surge during the token boom, with its dollar reserves rapidly expanding in offshore bank accounts.
Although initially used for trading, stablecoins offer tremendous value to those who want to hold U.S. dollars but cannot access the traditional banking system.
For example, people seeking to evade capital controls, Chinese wealthy individuals looking to diversify their assets, and Argentinians and Turks escaping inflation.
In 2018, Circle partnered with Coinbase to launch the compliant U.S. version: USDC. Early usage was primarily focused on trading, but some began predicting that this new internet dollar could enable anyone with internet access to receive dollar services 24/7.
Meanwhile, the projects that have survived from the token era are almost all financial in nature.
Since Ethereum can be used for fundraising, it can also be used to rebuild other foundational components of financial markets. Trading protocols like Uniswap, and lending protocols like Aave and Compound, later became known as "decentralized finance," or DeFi.
Stablecoins and DeFi will ultimately converge. What propels them to new heights is a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Wild growth reemerges (Messari, 2019–2021)
At the end of 2019, I joined Messari, a 13-person data research startup, as their first full-time marketing hire.
The company has a four-person analyst team conducting cutting-edge research in the DeFi space. At the time, the total value locked in DeFi had grown to $665 million.
Then, in early 2020, a mysterious virus erupted from China, threatening to bring the global economy to a halt. All markets plummeted.
Central banks around the world responded by injecting trillions of dollars into the global economy to prevent a collapse—just by the end of 2020, $9 trillion had been injected.
This money needed somewhere to go. With everyone stuck at home, massive amounts of capital flowed into Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and various speculative assets.
Bitcoin surged from under $4,000 to nearly $70,000, driven by institutional investors, surpassing all macro assets including gold and reaching a market capitalization of over $1 trillion.
Connor Dempsey: Central banks continue to print money, sending all markets to the moon, while also telling the world one thing: a non-depreciable currency has its place in this world.
Bitcoin has moved at the fastest pace, surpassing $1 trillion and outperforming all other macro assets.
These conditions also gave rise to the so-called "DeFi Summer," during which the total value locked in DeFi protocols increased 250-fold, reaching $180 billion.
DeFi was meant to rebuild traditional finance. But the "DeFi Summer" looked more like a massive online game, with players consisting of profit-driven traders betting billions of dollars.
The gameplay is called liquidity mining. Anonymous developers have launched new protocols, and for some reason, most of them use food as a theme.
YAM Finance, Spaghetti Money, SushiSwap. Traders deposit existing tokens (ETH, USDC, USDT) and earn newly minted tokens: $YAM, $SPAGHETTI, $SUSHI.
The entire process was both absurd and astonishing. As soon as the protocol launched, newly minted tokens surged to a $1 billion market cap within days—then early participants sold off, causing the token to crash.
This is the real Wild West era.
Like previous token manias, DeFi Summer created a wave of millionaires before collapsing under its own weight.
It also created a billionaire—his name is Sam Bankman-Fried. This man would become the epicenter of the next crypto disaster.
Standing at the summit (Coinbase, 2021)
In April 2021, Coinbase completed its IPO at a $100 billion valuation. Shortly after, I joined their corporate development and venture capital team.
My job was sitting next to people who did mergers and acquisitions or invested in early-stage crypto startups, writing articles on industry themes and hosting that short-lived Coinbase podcast. It was one of the most interesting rooms I’ve ever been in, and it often left me feeling:
(The original image shows the author at Coinbase headquarters)
This was also the period when the second speculative bubble took shape—centered around digital artworks known as NFTs.
If DeFi is the domain of professional traders, NFTs are more appealing to the general public. They provide artists with new ways to monetize their work online and demonstrate potential in networked property standards.
But like early tokens and the DeFi Summer, NFT speculation quickly got out of control.
Digital images of cartoon monkeys, "punk" apes, and penguins began selling for $1 million each. An artist named Beeple assembled a collection of these images into a single piece and sold it at Christie’s for the astonishing price of $69 million.
Crypto culture is everywhere. Larry David mocked crypto skeptics in a Super Bowl ad. Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange, FTX, spent $135 million on the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s home arena.
Everyone is making money through tokens, NFTs, and stocks.
This is a replay of the madness in 2017. Fueled by record money printing, the bubble is about four times the size of the previous one.
Liquidation (2022)
But soon, the flywheel began to come loose.
The interest rate cuts, money printing, and economic stimulus that pushed up all asset prices eventually seeped into consumer prices.
BTC, ETH, Nasdaq, and S&P all peaked at the end of 2021. At that moment, everyone realized: inflation could not be contained, and central banks had no choice but to reverse course, gradually withdrawing the policies that had previously pushed stocks and cryptocurrencies to all-time highs.
Under rising interest rates and fiscal tightening, everyone is starting to question the high-priced assets they hold.
Maybe monkey pictures aren't worth a million. Maybe SUSHI shouldn't be worth $3 billion. Maybe Dogecoin isn't worth $90 billion.
Then, everything began to collapse.
If the token boom was most like the 2001 internet crash, then what followed was more like the 2008 financial crisis. A few toxic assets, combined with high leverage, nearly dragged down everything connected to them.
The first toxic asset was Terra's UST stablecoin.
Major stablecoins like USDC and USDT are simply backed by cash and government bonds. UST, however, uses a complex algorithmic mechanism to maintain its peg. This mechanism works well in good market conditions but collapses entirely during market sell-offs.
$32 billion vanished in a few days. Those who thought they held it woke up to find they had nothing.
Next, a $10 billion hedge fund called Three Arrows Capital collapsed—it had heavy exposure to Terra and was over-leveraged across the industry.
Three Arrows Capital borrowed large sums from the crypto lending platforms Celsius and Voyager. These platforms lent out user deposits in pursuit of "safe" 8% returns. When Three Arrows collapsed, the platforms froze withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy, dragging retail investors' deposits down with them.
On Coinbase, we watched as FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried stepped in to rescue insolvent lending platforms like BlockFi.
He was hailed as the "J.P. Morgan of crypto" and the industry's white knight.
But the fact is, SBF and FTX themselves were the ones with the greatest exposure to risk.
Do you remember when FTX bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s home arena? That deal, along with the entire SBF empire, was propped up by FTT tokens created out of thin air by FTX. SBF used FTT as collateral to secure massive loans. When the price of FTT collapsed, the loans were called in, and FTX went bankrupt.
Worst of all, FTX had been misappropriating customer deposits to fund investments and cover various losses. The company, once valued at $32 billion, collapsed within a week, with $8 billion in customer funds disappearing.
SBF violated the fundamental rule of exchange operations: do not touch customer funds.
This is the crypto equivalent of the Lehman moment.
Elections and Casinos (2023–25)
After the collapse of FTX, SBF was imprisoned. The crypto market dropped from $3 trillion to under $1 trillion within 12 months.
Next, the Biden administration moved to strangle the industry within the United States.
Under Gary Gensler’s leadership, the SEC has sued nearly all domestic compliant companies for violations of securities laws.
Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap, and Robinhood have all received enforcement notices. Companies that have spent years striving to operate legally have become the SEC’s primary targets.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren has quietly pressured banks to abandon crypto clients, cut off the industry’s access to banking services, and drive teams overseas.
This strategy led to several unexpected consequences.
First, introducing anything with a business model in crypto (such as DeFi) will be classified as a security and could be subject to litigation at any time.
So the legally safest option became issuing a "meme coin," a token with no clear utility.
On a platform called Pump.fun, millions of meme coins have been launched. Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner, and the Hawk Tuah girl all released their own meme coins—none of them were anything but disasters.
Another casino has emerged in crypto, and it’s even bigger than the last one. Over 6 million meme coins have been launched. This sector peaked at $150 billion by the end of 2024, surpassing the scale of the NFT bubble in dollar terms.
Second, the industry conducted its first political mobilization. Several leading companies injected tens of millions of dollars into pro-crypto PACs and organized lobbying efforts in Washington.
Third, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. He pledged to fire Gensler, end the hostility toward banks, and make the United States the "world's crypto capital," successfully turning the newly mobilized industry into a campaign asset. Many believe it was crypto voters who helped him win the election.
Then, three days before he took office, Trump launched a meme coin: $TRUMP. His wife also launched one: $MELANIA.
This is the most absurd thing I’ve seen in eight years in the space. Ironically, $TRUMP marked the end of the meme coin bubble—it drained all other liquidity, followed immediately by the collapse of the entire meme coin market.
走向机构(Crossmint, 2025-26)
Setting aside that awkward episode, the industry’s bet on Trump still paid off.
At the moment Trump's victory became inevitable, Bitcoin reached a new high. The market had already priced in the fact that the world's largest economy was shifting from hostility toward cryptocurrency to a more favorable stance.
Gensler resigned. The new SEC dropped the lawsuits against U.S. crypto companies. Banks are once again able to engage with this industry.
Most importantly, the GENIUS Act was passed in July 2025—the first major federal cryptocurrency legislation in the United States, establishing clear rules for stablecoins.
Washington's message to institutions is clear: crypto, especially stablecoins, is about to become big business.
Stablecoin companies like Bridge and BVNK have been acquired by Stripe and Mastercard at valuations exceeding $1 billion. Rain completed its C-round of approximately $2 billion. My former employer, Circle, the company behind USDC, is set for an IPO in June 2025, with a peak valuation reaching $60 billion.
At this point, I was the Head of Marketing at Crossmint. We secured a partnership with MoneyGram, helping this century-old remittance giant use stablecoins for cross-border fund transfers.
Crossmint @crossmint · 2025/9/18 Major announcement: @MoneyGram, serving 200 countries and 50 million users, is adopting stablecoins—powered by the Crossmint wallet and stablecoin infrastructure. This is the future of cross-border finance.
As the benefits of tokenized dollars become clear, Wall Street is beginning to take the tokenization of other assets seriously.
Even Larry Fink has changed his tune. He once called Bitcoin a "money laundering index." Now, the CEO of BlackRock, which manages $14 trillion, calls tokenization "the next generation of markets," predicting that all stocks, bonds, and asset classes will eventually run on blockchain.
The revolution we didn't predict (now)
Eight years have passed since my Reddit post, and we still don’t have a decentralized Uber.
Blockchain has not eliminated all intermediaries, and fully decentralized currency has not replaced government-issued fiat money.
But I believe that, looking back in the future, this period will be remembered as the early chaotic era of an entirely new internet financial system.
Each cycle of boom and bust refines that infrastructure—the infrastructure capable of reshaping global finance and bringing it to anyone with an internet connection.
Token fundraising demonstrates that a company can raise money from anyone around the world.
DeFi has proven that trading and lending can run purely on code (see @HyperliquidX and @pendle_fi).
NFTs laid the foundation for digital ownership.
Even the most absurd cycle—meme coins—has proven that this underlying network can handle massive global transactions.
Replace it with non-fungible assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate, combined with a clear regulatory framework, and the entire financial system’s transition becomes a natural next step.
Critics could also try to ignore all of this. But the data on stablecoins is the hardest to dispute.
With over $300 billion in stablecoin supply currently in circulation, $33 trillion in settlement volume was achieved in 2025. So far this year, over $40 trillion has been settled, with the potential to reach $100 trillion.
Skeptics will say that a large portion of this is crypto trading and bot activity. That’s true. But the scale is there, and the U.S. government is telling you where the direction lies.
One key point, though a bit complex: stablecoins are backed by U.S. Treasury bonds, which are debt instruments issued by the U.S. government to raise funds.
Each stablecoin issued creates new demand for U.S. debt, which the U.S. government currently needs most. For this reason, the Treasury Secretary has ranked stablecoin growth as a strategic priority for the United States:
Recent reports predict that by the end of this century, stablecoins could grow into a $3.7 trillion market. With the passage of the GENIUS Act, this scenario is becoming increasingly likely. A thriving stablecoin ecosystem will drive private sector demand for U.S. Treasuries...
Where is the path?
AI is changing everything, and cryptocurrency is no exception.
The marriage of cryptography and AI has already begun. Millions of AI agents will soon conduct transactions in the real world. They will use cards backed by stablecoins to interact with merchants in over 200 countries, and they will also transact directly with each other using cryptocurrency wallets and stablecoins.
Agents that shop for us, manage our finances, and conduct transactions on behalf of entire companies are essentially a given.
Looking further ahead, we’ll see business models entirely driven by agents, with no humans in the loop. Imagine a hedge fund that reads every SEC filing, builds its own models, and executes its own trades—without a single analyst or portfolio manager in sight.
As this sci-fi future gradually becomes reality, crypto will go mainstream by integrating with existing systems, not by replacing them.
The backend will be encrypted. The frontend will look exactly like what people are already using. Most people won’t even notice.
Institutions will replace outdated infrastructure that has been in use for decades. Startups will launch financial products globally at an unprecedented speed and scale. The end result is a 7×24 financial system that is just as accessible to people in Nigeria as it is to those in New York.
From here, a million more innovations will emerge.
Will these predictions look as embarrassing eight years from now as I find my old article today? Let’s wait and see.