crypto is in quarter life crisis and so do I

Since 2022, crypto has been my obsession and has been a huge part of my identity. I’ve built a career, friendship, community, and lifestyle around. However, from 2025, this old and immature crypto(tldr, niche weirld but interesting hacker, dev, researcher group along with token traders) is disappearing it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It causes confusion, but I’d like to view more on part of being mature. Well, I’m hitting 25 in 3 months, and maybe it’s time to think about some life. Yes, so this post is about crypto and myself are both hitting quarter life crisis

I’ve already written a metaphorical summary of this in a previous post, if you haven’t.

old crypto

why unique

Initially, I got attracted by crypto as it is a unique intersection of technology and finance. On one side are blockchain systems, rooted in distributed systems and cryptography. On the other is a loosely defined financial industry, which focuses on the business spectrum from token gambling to fintech 2.0. This naturally invokes a lot of paradoxical challenges as well: How to make a decentralized system perform fast and efficiently? Does privacy is what people really cares? Does the token really good?

type of people

Crypto did attract a lot of unique, interesting people. While human categorization is never discrete, I’ve tried to capture most of the “interesting” people I’ve met over three years in crypto into a few types.

• type 1) Ideological anarchists who are driven by early crypto ideals: protecting minorities, preserving privacy, and resisting centralized power. They are often referred to as Bitcoin OGs and were drawn in by crypto’s political and philosophical foundations.

• type 2) Unregulated finance “degens” who engage in trading, building, or using high risk financial products. They embrace speculation and often view crypto as gambling 2.0, a permissionless arena for financial experimentation.

• type 3) As capital flooded the ecosystem, crypto began to attract builders(founder type) who saw it as an underrated, high-potential frontier(at least at the time). This group focuses on creating products, protocols, and infrastructure.

• type 4) Researchers and low-level engineers This includes cryptography researchers (e.g. zk, FHE), as well as developers working in Rust or other low-level languages. For many, crypto offered a rare opportunity to work on technically deep problems they genuinely enjoy, often with relatively high compensation.

Side note: In general, crypto has attracted so many scammers just purely for the sake of money, with low integrity due to its absurd structure, money got printed without a “product”. First, I don’t deal with this type of person. Also, the absurd structure will be further elaborated.

who makes money

If you want to make a business, the known playbook is simply: A. Play a token game B. Be devshop or auditshop, client base C. Make a product that has users (which in this case, trader as user or perhaps crypto as just a payment method, which in this case, ur not a crypto business)

The general structure, historically, is heavily on

token sale(where money made) 
            V
down stream(some foundation, some startup etc) 
            V
hardcore researchers/engineers (especially cryptography)

Here comes type 4 people could just research without any concern about monetization. This indeed brought a lot of innovation in cryptography research in the blockchain context due to this market incentive.

attention, not user

So products don’t have users, there’s a lot of funding for startups, which funding source is from a token sale. Yes, the industry is running based on attention.

CT, aka crypto Twitter, took an influential part here. Actually been decreasing its meaning than before, but as its retrospective post will not talk about now.

As the market can be manipulated by attention, downstream, whether you are a founder, dev, researcher, posting the work to Twitter, and getting attention is considered crucial. A good single viral post can lead to getting a job, knowing the right people, and having strong mutuals in your Twitter profile leads to how you’ll likely succeed, aka “high signal”.

(my three years in CT summery)

community, but also friends

Attention is one of the traits of the crypto community. As it is composed of unique types of people as mentioned above, it’s multi-cultural, a heavily travel lifestyle, and also pretty young(this part I might be biased towards my friends group who are mostly in their 20s) and be friends not just college.

This friendly, open vibe extends to a further interesting point, it’s definitely relatively easy to reach the top or be friends with people been in the scene for a long time. Industry is moving fast and unsettled, and still, small as a whole community kinda fits into Twitter. e.g, if someone is new to AI, it’d be hard to be friends with the founder of Antropic / OpenAI, etc, whereas in crypto can relatively easily encounter/communicate with people who are considered “top” in the industry.

Not only for people based on this open source culture, but it’s also easy to get learning materials as beginners, such as educational contents, open source projects, and a lot of initial support programs which not necessarily require 5+ years of phd.

vibe is shifting

Yes, things are changing. Overall, I view it as the industry is just growing up, different phase.

A big shift is around the merging between crypto and with traditional world, which was pretty separate before. Type 3) could integrate crypto infra within traditional distributed channels and build as fintech 2.0. Or else, if you want a product, you have to find another problem to solve, not a crypto-native. Type 2) could continue as yet unregulated gambling. Only the remaining Type 1) might leave a small number of big players, such as some privacy chains.

Regarding type 4), probably no more easy grant money for just doing a “cool project” without being useful in a business context. No extreme overflooding downstream of money for experimental ideas or projects, and attention does not matter much anymore(maybe still a token sale, it matters, but I’m talking more about the general context).

Crypto has been such a unique environment for nerds who just want to build “cool stuff and somehow try to make it useful” can earn money and reputation. Unfortunately don’t think this was sustainable.

Some personal learning:

• working irl with a small, highly talented, curious, optimistic people is fun
• A highly talented team might be easier to find in a global setting, which means borderless transaction really matters
• money, research, engineering,… these are all just methods X for a bigger goal(or value) Y. Just optimizing for X might not good idea.
• But yes, money is really important in this capitalism society. The only ones who can even realize money is not important is the ones who already have previliage of money.
• generally computer science topics(distributed system), Cryptography, Rust is pretty fun

Mainly, I just want to take some time to genuinely think about what excites me, what really matters to me, and the world. I’m pretty optimistic that following curiosity and solving random, fun questions could lead the way. Well, I’m turning 25 after 3 months, so I can also mark this as a quarter life crisis. I’m also happy to chat with people who went through a similar path(regardless of crypto, but more on quarter life crisis in general), so say hi here!