Once, it was something so pure, liberating, and full of hope.

Author: hitesh.eth

Translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Since the birth of cryptocurrency, it has been based on altruism. The early users of any cryptocurrency-based products were not in pursuit of money. In fact, they were happy to provide resources for early crypto networks like BitTorrent, helping a vast community.

In those days, when OTT (streaming platforms) had not yet become mainstream, it was very difficult to watch a high-quality movie online, which was almost a common problem worldwide. We had to wait months for a movie to air on television to see those films we couldn't watch in theaters every weekend.

Film culture has been continuously evolving and growing, which I believe is the only culture that consistently attracts more and more people. Those drawn to film culture often stay for a long time, and cryptocurrency has played a role in this process. It has allowed more people around the world to engage through the internet, making film culture more inclusive and diverse.

Many people provided movie files through their computer systems, sharing them using seeds and peers, while we downloaded from their systems in a peer-to-peer (p2p) manner. It all felt like magic. It was free, driven entirely by a shared love for movies.

This shared sentiment of resisting centralized systems and processes, returning power to the people, is the core spirit of those who intentionally or unintentionally participated in early crypto products.

Then, Bitcoin emerged, marking a watershed moment in the crypto space. In the early days of Bitcoin, those who joined the network did not care about its price. They were 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, even though Bitcoin had no market value at the time. 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 backseat, as fear and greed quietly seeped in, gradually polluting the consciousness of the network.

Events like Mt. Gox, Bitconnect, and OneCoin became typical cases where malicious actors extracted millions of Bitcoins from ordinary people filled with dreams and hopes. We always felt like early participants in the game. In fact, we were not, brother.

In reality, we arrived too late, even later than those who drove taxis in remote corners with big smiles but lost 10 Bitcoins due to the Bitconnect scam. These people were the true early participants. They believed in Bitcoin but never truly understood its significant meaning.

Perhaps everything changed once money became linked to cryptocurrency. Those who decided to build the crypto market after 2012 adopted "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, leading to the rise of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). Over the next 12 months, more than 500 tokens entered the market through ICOs. Projects raised billions of dollars through ICOs. However, most tokens never got a proper listing opportunity, and almost all ICO tokens eventually disappeared within three years.

But when these projects were hot, people felt they would change the world. Everyone believed in these ideas without realizing 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 and thus lost. And the bad actors succeeded again. Some even managed to disguise themselves as "good people" and continue operating at higher levels.

The New Face of Crypto

Crypto tokens became promise data strings with limited supply, controlled by project teams who managed the distribution of these tokens. The project teams slowly released the token supply to the market in a calculated manner, partially distributing it to create artificial demand, and then designed incentive mechanisms to attract early participants, binding their identities and reputations to the tokens.

These incentives were not just economic but also psychological triggers aimed at igniting belief, tribalism, and "fear of missing out" (FOMO). The real product is not the token, but the illusion. The narratives built around these data strings are not only false but also meticulously emotionally manipulated. The target has always been those in the survival loop with "reactive minds," the millions seeking meaning and yearning for belief.

Once this mindset is touched, you don't even need evidence, just a story, a seemingly "last chance" symbol. Human thinking, conditioned by decades of scarcity, shame, or missed opportunities, will tightly grasp these narratives. And those behind these data strings know this all too well. What they sell is not 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, just faster. The concentration of wealth has always relied on this asymmetry. A few know the rules of the game, while most hold onto dreams. But in the world of tokens, the speed of belief propagation far exceeds the speed of reflection. Victims don't even have time to stop and think because the next promise has already appeared—shiny, trendy, full of potential, and just credible enough to seem like a hope for redemption.

The Truth of Extraction

We have reached a stage where we feel deceived but cannot accept this fact. For new participants entering the market, hope can still be seen; but for veterans who have experienced two to three market cycles, they cannot even digest the current market structure. This is something they cannot truly accept. They cannot keep up with the changes in narratives, track the rapid operation of catalysts, or act quickly because they are still stuck in a market perception that once felt simpler.

But if you think deeply, the market has never been "simple" or "complex"; it all comes down to scale. In the past, an "extractor" faced a hundred thousand users, while now, an "extractor" only needs to face a hundred users.

Your probability of being extracted has become extremely high. Even in the world of extractors, there is competition, so they cannot focus their attention on one thing for too long to avoid exposure. They constantly throw new narratives into the market to stir excitement among participants.

People oscillate between winning and losing; some stay, some leave, but extraction never stops; instead, it continues to scale up. Even if you are in the cycle of extraction, there will always be a window for you to exit with profits, depending on your discipline, risk management, and the lessons learned from the past. Some smart individuals profit by exiting at the right time, while others become "exit liquidity." This cycle will continue because extractors know they have only just scratched the surface of human greed.

As mainstream adoption increases, more people will get trapped. And when this happens, the government will intervene in the name of regulation to "save" us, ultimately circulating the extracted funds back to themselves in the form of taxes.

Reflection

When you realize all this and begin to think deeply, comparing it to the original altruistic intent, you may find yourself unable to hold back tears at what we have done to cryptocurrency.

Once, it was something so pure, liberating, and full of hope, showing us the possibility 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 followed the ideals of altruism but handed over our peace of mind and money to the market, while some scammer hides in the corner, laughing at our foolishness.

Dreams turned into illusions, and illusions evolved into extraction, and perhaps this is the true story of cryptocurrency.

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