After eight years of bull and bear markets, the crypto revolution has not followed the expected script. Fiat currency is still here, intermediaries are still here, but every bubble and liquidation has brought a new financial foundation closer to us.

Written by: Connor Dempsey

Translated by: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher

The crypto revolution has indeed happened. It’s just completely different from what was initially expected.

When I first entered the space in 2017, the consensus in the industry was: this technology would change everything.

Government-issued fiat currency would be replaced by decentralized currency. Blockchains would eliminate the rent-seeking intermediaries in every transaction. Power would shift from companies to users.

None of this has really happened. But other things have occurred.

By now, I have worked at four crypto companies for eight years: @circle, @MessariCrypto, @coinbase, @crossmint.

I have witnessed this asset class expand from under $1 billion to over $40 trillion, going through several rounds of speculative bubbles and also a crisis close to a systemic collapse. I found that what this industry has actually built is much more interesting than what was predicted back then.

Before I start my fifth job, I want to record these eight years. I also want to talk about where I think it will go next.

False Prosperity (2017-18 Token Issuance Frenzy)

In early 2017, I stumbled upon an explanation of Bitcoin in a book, and that's when I got hooked. Before long, I read all the related books I could find and then made a plan: to go to Singapore and specifically write a blog documenting this fascinating new technology.

At that time, I didn’t realize I was at the end of a massive speculative bubble surrounding "early token financing." This model allowed anyone to raise funds online for an idea by selling digital tokens to investors.

Ethereum was the main battleground for all of this.

In November 2017, I published a beginner's 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—encapsulating the optimism of that year, while also predicting a future that never came.

Predictions of That Year

The core idea of the article: Blockchain networks like Ethereum can be used to build new types of consumer applications.

Most consumer applications (like Facebook, Uber) create value that flows to big companies and a small number of investors. The value created by these new applications would be shared by early participants (and early token investors).

The article envisioned building a "decentralized Uber" on Ethereum. Early users and drivers would earn tokens for completing trips, thus owning a part of the network. This would more fairly reward those early believers who helped the network's cold start.

On paper, it was a worthy goal. But this decentralized revolution ended up stumbling badly.

What Actually Happened

A speculative frenzy akin to the Internet bubble of 2001.

Ethereum was proven to be the most efficient crowdfunding platform in history. More than 3,000 token issuance projects raised $22 billion from global investors.

But like in 2001, the underlying technology was nowhere near capable of supporting those applications with outrageous valuations.

Even worse, this model destroyed the normal incentive mechanisms between investors and builders. Builders could raise $10 million overnight with just an idea.

The returns investors received were just tokens, which only appreciate after the project is completed. But builders kept some tokens themselves, able to cash out and become wealthy from day one, thus losing the motivation to build useful products.

Founders and early investors made a fortune, while inexperienced investors were left buried. Although there were genuinely eager individuals, this model sadly became a breeding ground for greed, fraud, and exploitation.

Just like every previous speculative bubble over the past few hundred years.

Building from the Ruins (Circle, 2018-19)

The wallet was deflating day by day. Using the little fame I had accumulated on Reddit, I landed a junior marketing position at Circle in early 2018.

Circle was four years old at that time. They had a set of unprofitable consumer applications (investing, payments, trading), along with an over-the-counter trading desk quietly printing money to keep the company running.

For the next two years, the whole industry was staggering through the hangover of the token frenzy. Most projects were abandoned, and most tokens went to zero. The atmosphere was utterly dreadful.

But it was also at this time that the seeds for the next crypto renaissance were sown.

This time, the focus shifted from consumer applications to reshaping finance with the internet.

The Dollar and DeFi

The dollar-backed "stablecoins" were originally created to allow traders to switch easily between crypto positions. They locked value at $1 with a 1:1 reserve of dollars and treasury bonds.

Tether's USDT took off first during the token frenzy, with dollar reserves swelling rapidly in offshore bank accounts.

Although initially for trading scenarios, stablecoins offered immense value to those wanting to hold dollars but who couldn’t access traditional banking systems.

For example, those wanting to avoid capital controls. Wealthy Chinese looking to diversify assets. Argentinians and Turks fleeing inflation.

In 2018, Circle teamed up with Coinbase to launch the compliant U.S. version: USDC. Early usage was still primarily trading-focused, but some began to predict: this new internet dollar could provide dollar services to anyone with internet access, 24/7.

At the same time, the projects that survived the token era were almost all financial in nature.

If Ethereum could be used for funding, it could also be used to rebuild other foundational components of financial markets. Trading protocols (Uniswap), lending protocols (Aave, Compound), later dubbed "decentralized finance," or DeFi.

Stablecoins and DeFi would eventually converge. And the catalyst pushing them into the stratosphere was a once-in-a-century global pandemic.

Wild Growth Resurfaces (Messari, 2019-2021)

At the end of 2019, I joined a data research startup, Messari, with 13 people, becoming their first full-time marketer.

The company had a 4-person analyst team conducting cutting-edge research in the DeFi space. At that time, the total value locked in DeFi had already grown to $665 million.

Then, in early 2020, a mysterious virus erupted from China, threatening to halt the global economy. All markets crashed.

Central banks responded by injecting trillions of dollars into the global economy to prevent a collapse. By the end of 2020, $9 trillion had been injected.

This money needed a place to go. With everyone stuck at home, vast amounts of capital flowed into Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and various speculative assets.

Bitcoin skyrocketed from under $4,000 to nearly $70,000, surpassing a trillion-dollar market cap under the push of institutional investors, outperforming all other macro assets like gold.

As central banks continued printing money, they sent all markets to the moon while revealing a key truth: non-depreciable currency has its place in this world.

#Bitcoin surged to over a trillion dollars, outperforming all other macro assets.

These conditions also birthed the so-called "DeFi Summer," where the total value of DeFi protocols multiplied by 250, reaching $180 billion.

DeFi was supposed to recreate traditional finance. But "DeFi Summer" resembled a massive online game, with players being a group of profit-driven traders, and stakes reaching tens of billions of dollars.

The game mechanics were called liquidity mining. Anonymous developers launched new protocols, almost all inexplicably themed around food.

YAM Finance, Spaghetti Money, SushiSwap. Traders deposited existing tokens (ETH, USDC, USDT) to earn newly minted tokens. $YAM, $SPAGHETTI, $SUSHI.

The entire process was both ridiculous and astonishing. The protocols went live, newly minted tokens could reach a billion-dollar market cap within days. Then early participants sold off, and the tokens crashed.

This was a true Wild West epoch.

Like the previous token frenzy, DeFi Summer created another wave of millionaires before collapsing in on itself.

It also birthed a billionaire—his name was Sam Bankman-Fried. This person would become the center of the next crypto disaster.

Standing on the Peak (Coinbase, 2021)

In April 2021, Coinbase completed its IPO with a valuation of $100 billion. Shortly after, I was recruited into their corporate development and venture capital team.

My job was to sit next to those involved in mergers and acquisitions, investing in early crypto startups, writing industry-themed articles, and working on Coinbase's short-lived podcast. This was one of the most fascinating rooms I’ve been in, often leaving me with the feeling:

(The original photo shows the author at Coinbase headquarters)

This was also a period when the second round of speculative bubbles began to take shape—around a digital artwork called NFTs.

If DeFi was the realm of professional traders, NFTs were more appealing to the general public. They provided artists with a new way to monetize online and showcased the potential of standardized digital ownership on the web.

But like the early tokens and DeFi Summer, NFT speculation quickly spiraled out of control.

Digital images of cartoon apes, "punks," and penguins started selling for $1 million each. An artist named Beeple combined a series of images into a single piece that fetched a ridiculous $69 million at Christie's auction.

Crypto culture was everywhere. Larry David mocked crypto skeptics in a Super Bowl ad. Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange FTX spent $135 million to acquire naming rights for the Miami Heat's arena.

Everyone was getting rich through tokens, NFTs, and stocks.

This was a rehash of the 2017 kind of madness. Fueled by record money printing, the bubble’s magnitude was nearly quadruple that of the previous cycle.

Liquidation (2022)

But soon, the flywheel began to come undone.

The interest rate cuts, money printing, and economic stimulus that pushed all asset prices up eventually seeped into consumer goods prices.

BTC, ETH, Nasdaq, and S&P all peaked at the end of 2021. At that moment, everyone realized: inflation was uncontainable, and central banks had to reverse course, unwinding the policies that had pushed stocks and crypto to historical highs.

Under rising interest rates and fiscal tightening, everyone looked at the expensive assets they had purchased, beginning to drum up skepticism.

Perhaps the ape image isn't worth a million. Perhaps SUSHI shouldn't be valued at $3 billion. Perhaps Dogecoin isn't worth $90 billion.

Then, everything began to crash.

If the token frenzy resembled the Internet crash of 2001, what followed was more akin to the 2008 financial crisis. A few toxic assets, combined with high leverage, nearly dragged everything associated down.

The first toxic asset was Terra's UST stablecoin.

Mainstream stablecoins (USDC, USDT) simply had cash and treasury bonds as reserves. UST relied on a complex algorithmic mechanism to maintain its peg. The mechanism could run smoothly in good market conditions, but would explode upon market sell-offs.

$32 billion evaporated in days. Those who thought they owned it woke up to find they had nothing.

Next, a hedge fund called Three Arrows Capital, worth $10 billion, collapsed—it had heavily invested in Terra and was excessively leveraged throughout the entire industry.

Three Arrows borrowed large sums from crypto lending platforms Celsius and Voyager. These platforms lent using user deposits, promising a "safe" 8% return. When Three Arrows collapsed, the platforms froze withdrawals, declared bankruptcy, and took retail deposits down with them.

At Coinbase, we watched FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried spring into action, rescuing struggling lending platforms like BlockFi.

He was hailed as "the J.P. Morgan of crypto," the white knight of the industry.

But the truth was, SBF and FTX themselves had the largest risk exposure.

Remember when FTX acquired the naming rights to the Miami Heat's arena? That deal—and the entire SBF empire—was supported by tokens printed out of thin air by FTX—FTT. SBF used FTT as collateral to borrow massive loans. When the FTT price crashed, the loans were called back, and FTX went bankrupt.

Worst of all, FTX had been misappropriating customer deposits for investments, filling various holes. This company, once valued at $32 billion, collapsed within a week, with $8 billion in customer funds going missing.

SBF violated the fundamental rule of operating an exchange: do not touch customer funds.

This was crypto's Lehman moment.

Election and the Casino (2023-25)

After FTX’s collapse, SBF went to jail. The crypto market dropped from $3 trillion to below $1 trillion within 12 months.

Next, the Biden administration began to clamp down on the industry within the United States.

The SEC, led by Gary Gensler, sued almost all compliant companies domestically for violating securities laws.

Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap, Robinhood all received enforcement notices. The companies that had spent years striving to operate legally became the SEC's primary targets.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren covertly pressured banks to abandon crypto clients, cutting off the industry’s banking channels and pushing teams overseas.

This strategy produced several unexpected consequences.

First, launching anything with a business model (like DeFi) in crypto would be classified as a security, and could be subject to lawsuit at any time.

Thus, the legally safest choice became to issue "meme coins," tokens with no clear use.

On a platform called Pump.fun, millions of meme coins were launched. Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner, and the Hawk Tuah girls all launched their own meme coins. Without exception, they were all disasters.

The crypto space once again became a casino, even larger than the last. Over 6 million kinds of meme coins were issued. This sector peaked at $150 billion in late 2024, even exceeding the scale of the NFT bubble at its height, in dollar terms.

Second, the industry mobilized for politics for the first time. Several leading companies poured tens of millions of dollars into PACs that support crypto, engaging in organized lobbying in Washington.

Third, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. He promised to fire Gensler, end the hostility toward banks, and make the U.S. "the world's crypto capital," successfully turning the recently mobilized industry into a campaign asset. Many believe it was the crypto voters who helped him win the election.

Then, three days before his inauguration, Trump issued a meme coin: $TRUMP. His wife also launched: $MELANIA.

This was the most absurd thing I’d seen in my eight years in the space. Ironically, $TRUMP marked the end of the meme coin bubble—it siphoned all other liquidity away, leading straight into the collapse of the entire meme coin market.

Towards Institutions (Crossmint, 2025-26)

Setting aside that awkward interlude, the industry's bet on Trump proved to be victorious.

In the moment Trump seemed set for victory, Bitcoin hit new highs. The market had preemptively absorbed a reality: the world’s largest economy was shifting from hostility to friendliness toward crypto.

Gensler resigned. The new SEC dropped lawsuits against U.S. crypto companies. Banks were once again able to engage with the industry.

Most importantly, the GENIUS Act was passed in July 2025—the first major federal cryptocurrency legislation in the U.S., setting clear rules for stablecoins.

The signal sent from Washington to institutions was clear: crypto, especially stablecoins, were about to become a big business.

Stablecoin companies like Bridge and BVNK were acquired by Stripe and Mastercard for over $1 billion in valuation. Rain closed a C round of about $2 billion. My former employer, Circle, behind USDC, went public in June 2025, peaking at a valuation of $60 billion.

By this time, I had become the marketing head at Crossmint. We struck a deal with MoneyGram to help the century-old remittance giant use stablecoins for cross-border remittances.

Crossmint @crossmint · 2025/9/18 Major news: @MoneyGram, serving 200 countries and 50 million users, is adopting stablecoins, supported by the Crossmint wallet and stablecoin infrastructure. This is the future of cross-border finance.

As the benefits of "tokenizing" the dollar became clearer, Wall Street began to take the tokenization of other assets seriously.

Even Larry Fink changed his tune. He had previously called Bitcoin a "money laundering index." Now, this CEO of BlackRock, managing $14 trillion, called tokenization "the next generation of the market," predicting that all stocks, bonds, and asset classes would eventually run on the blockchain.

The Revolution We Did Not Predict (Present Day)

Eight years later from my Reddit article, we still don’t have a decentralized Uber.

Blockchain has not eliminated all intermediaries, and completely decentralized currencies have not replaced government-issued fiat currencies.

But I believe that in the future, when we look back on this period, it will be remembered as the early chaotic years of a new internet financial system.

Every round of boom and bust has been refining that infrastructure. This infrastructure has the capability to reshape global finance, delivering it to anyone with internet connectivity.

Token financing has shown that companies can raise money from anyone across the globe.

DeFi has proven that trading and lending can purely operate on code (look at @HyperliquidX and @pendle_fi).

NFTs have laid the groundwork for internet ownership.

Even the most ridiculous round—meme coins—has proven that the underlying network can withstand massive global transactions.

Translating that into stocks, bonds, real estate, and adding a clear regulatory framework, the entire financial system's migration will be a matter of smooth sailing.

Critics may try to ignore all of this. But the data on stablecoins is the hardest piece to argue against.

Currently, the supply of stablecoins exceeds $300 billion, completing $33 trillion in settlements in 2025. So far this year, over $40 trillion has been settled, with a goal of reaching $100 trillion.

Skeptics will say a large portion of this is crypto trading and bot activity. This is true. But the scale is here, and the U.S. government is indicating where the direction lies.

One key point, albeit a bit convoluted: stablecoins are backed by U.S. treasury bonds, while treasury bonds are debts issued by the U.S. government for financing.

Every time a stablecoin is issued, it creates a new demand for U.S. debt, and currently, the U.S. government needs that demand the most. For this reason, the Treasury has listed the growth of stablecoins as a strategic priority for the U.S.:

Recent reports predict that by the end of the century, stablecoins could grow into a $3.7 trillion market. With the passage of the GENIUS Act, this scenario is becoming increasingly likely. A prosperous stablecoin ecosystem will drive private sector demand for U.S. treasury bonds...

Where to Next?

AI is changing everything, and crypto is no exception.

The marriage of crypto and AI has begun. Millions of AI agents will soon conduct transactions in the real world. They will interface with merchants in over 200 countries using stablecoin-backed cards. They will also trade directly with each other using crypto wallets and stablecoins.

Agents that shop for us, manage finances, and conduct transactions on behalf of entire companies are basically a given.

Further down the line, we’ll see completely agent-driven business models, where humans are not in the loop. Imagine a hedge fund: it reads every SEC filing, builds models itself, trades itself, without a single analyst or fund manager in sight.

As this sci-fi future gradually unfolds, crypto will move into the mainstream through integration with old systems, rather than replacing them.

The backend will be crypto. The frontend will look exactly like the things people are already using. Most people won't even notice.

Institutions will replace outdated infrastructure used for decades. Startups will launch financial products at unprecedented speed and scale across the globe. The end result will be a 24/7 financial system that works equally well for people in Nigeria as it does for those in New York.

From this point, millions of innovations will sprout.

In eight years, looking back at these predictions, I wonder if it will be as embarrassing as looking back at my old article today. We shall see.