Author: hitesh.eth
Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow
Since the birth of cryptocurrency, it has been based on altruism. Early users of any cryptocurrency-based products were not in it for the money. In fact, they were happy to provide resources for early crypto networks like BitTorrent, thus helping a large community.
In that era, when OTT (streaming platforms) had not yet become widespread, it was very difficult to watch a high-quality good movie online, which was almost a common problem worldwide. We had to wait for months for the TV stations to broadcast them in order to see those movies that we couldn't go to the cinema to watch every weekend.
Film culture has been continuously developing and growing, and I believe it is the only culture that consistently attracts more and more people. Those who are drawn to film culture often stay in it for a long time, and cryptocurrency has played a role in this process. It allows more people around the world to engage through the internet, making film culture more inclusive and diverse.
Many people provide movie files through their computer systems, sharing them using seeds and peers, while we download from their systems in a peer-to-peer (p2p) manner. It's all like magic. It's free and driven entirely by a shared love for movies.
This shared sentiment of opposing centralized systems and processes, and returning power to the people, is the core spirit of those who intentionally or unintentionally participated in early cryptocurrency products.
Then, Bitcoin emerged, marking a watershed moment in the cryptocurrency space. In the early days of Bitcoin, those who joined the network were not concerned about its price. They focused on building the network, educating more people, and promoting early adoption. They even gave away Bitcoin for free through forums, offline meetups, events, and mailing lists.
Between 2009 and 2010, thousands of Bitcoins were given away for free, when Bitcoin actually had no market value at all. But with the emergence of exchanges, Bitcoin began to be traded and gradually assigned value by the market. This changed everything. The spirit of altruism began to take a back seat, and fear and greed quietly seeped in, gradually contaminating the consciousness of the network.
Events like Mt. Gox, Bitconnect, and OneCoin have become typical cases, where these malicious actors extracted millions of bitcoins from ordinary people who were filled with dreams and hopes. We always feel like we are early participants in the game. In fact, we are not, brother.
In fact, we arrived too late, even later than those who were driving taxis in remote corners with big smiles on their faces, but lost 10 bitcoins due to the Bitconnect scam. These people are the true early participants. They believed in Bitcoin but never really understood its significant meaning.
Perhaps everything changed after money became linked to cryptocurrencies. Those who decided to build the crypto market after 2012 set “profiting from information asymmetry” as a new agenda. They achieved great success in the market, especially in 2017, when hundreds of tokens were traded on a few exchanges, which also gave rise to the boom of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). In the following 12 months, over 500 tokens entered the market through ICOs. Projects raised billions of dollars through ICOs. However, most tokens never received proper listing opportunities, and almost all ICO tokens eventually perished within three years.
But when these projects were hot, people felt they would change the world. Everyone believed in these ideas, but they did not realize that the infrastructure was not ready at all. Some truly concerned individuals kept reminding others, but no one wanted to listen. All they saw were others making money and sharing success stories online, which was enough to make them believe that cryptocurrency would change their lives. They believed it, and as a result, they lost. And the bad guys succeeded again. Some even successfully disguised themselves as “good people” and are still operating in higher positions today.
The New Face of Cryptocurrency
Crypto tokens have become a promise of limited supply data strings, with project teams controlling the distribution of these tokens. The project teams slowly release the token supply to the market in a carefully calculated manner, with part of the distribution used to create artificial demand, and then design incentive mechanisms to attract early participants, binding their identity and reputation to the tokens.
These incentives are not just economic, but also psychological triggers aimed at eliciting beliefs, tribalism, and “fear of missing out” (FOMO). The real product is not the tokens, but the illusion. The narratives built around these data strings are not only false but also carefully manipulated emotionally. The target is always those in the survival loop, the “reactive mind,” the millions who seek meaning and yearn for faith.
Once this kind of thinking is reached, you don't even need evidence, just a story, a symbol that seems like the “last chance.” Human thinking, conditioned by decades of scarcity, shame, or missed opportunities, will tightly grasp these narratives. Those behind these data strings know this all too well. They are not selling a product, but hope—hope cloaked in digital, trend, and community jargon. They exploit information asymmetry with precision because hope is the easiest drug to sell and the hardest to quit.
What we see is not something new; it has just become faster. The concentration of wealth has always relied on this asymmetry. A few know the rules of the game, while the majority hold tightly to their dreams. But in the world of tokens, the speed of belief propagation far exceeds the speed of reflection. Victims do not even have time to stop and think, because the next promise has already appeared—shiny, trendy, full of potential, and just credible enough, like a hope for redemption.
The Truth of Extraction
We have reached a stage where we feel deceived, yet cannot accept this fact. For new participants just entering the market, there is still hope; but for veterans who have experienced two to three market cycles, they are unable to digest the current market structure. This is something they cannot truly accept. They cannot keep up with the changes in narratives, cannot track the rapid operation of catalysts, and cannot act quickly because they are still stuck in a market perspective that they once found simpler.
But if you think about it deeply, the market has never been divided into “simple” or “complex”; it all depends on the scale. In the past, an “extractor” faced a hundred thousand users, while now an “extractor” only needs to face a hundred users.
The probability of being squeezed becomes extremely high. Even in the world of the squeezers, there is competition, so they cannot focus their attention on one thing for too long to avoid exposure. They continuously throw new narratives into the market to excite the participants.
People wander between winning and losing, some stay, some leave, but the extraction never stops, instead, it continues to scale up. Even if you find yourself in the cycle of extraction, there will always be a window for you to exit with profits, depending on your self-discipline, risk management, and the lessons learned from the past. Some smart individuals profit by exiting at the right moment, while others become “exit liquidity.” This cycle will continue indefinitely because extractors know they have only just scratched the surface of human greed.
As the mainstream adoption rate increases, more people will become trapped in it. When this happens, the government will intervene in the name of regulation to “save” us, ultimately siphoning off the funds collected back into its own hands through taxation.
Reflection
When you realize all of this and start to think deeply about it, comparing it to the original intention of altruism, you may find yourself unable to hold back tears at seeing everything we've done for cryptocurrency.
Once, it was something so pure, liberating, and full of hope, showing us the possibilities of alternative systems.
It was supposed to return power to us.
And now, it seems we have power, but this power is a lost power.
We follow the concept of altruism, yet we hand over our spiritual peace and money to the market, while a certain scammer hides in the corner laughing at our foolishness.
Dreams have turned into illusions, and illusions have evolved into exploitation, and perhaps this is the true story of cryptocurrency.
