Conversation with ViaBTC CEO Yang Haipo: Is the essence of blockchain a libertarian experiment?

After multiple bull and bear cycles and narrative revolutions, the cryptocurrency industry is entering a more complex stage: on one hand accelerating mainstream adoption, and on the other continuously experiencing a decline in imagination. ETFs, stablecoins, and institutional funds are making blockchain increasingly resemble part of the financial system; meanwhile, the market’s enthusiasm for “disrupting everything” quickly diminishes in repeated cycles. It is precisely because of this that now may be the most suitable time to revisit the fundamental question: What exactly is blockchain?

Around this question, we had an in-depth conversation with Yang Haipo, CEO of ViaBTC. As one of the earliest participants and builders in the crypto industry, his answer is not “new infrastructure” or “new technology,” but a sharper definition: blockchain is a hardcore liberalist experiment. This experiment, spanning over a decade, continuously tests an age-old question—when trust no longer depends on central authorities, how far can freedom go?

Q: After multiple cycles, many users have become disillusioned with the narratives of “blockchain” and “decentralization.” Standing at this point in time, how do you view blockchain?

Honestly, most people’s understanding of blockchain was misguided from the start. They thought it was like AI or cloud computing—something that enterprises could buy, that governments could include in PowerPoint presentations as “new infrastructure.” But blockchain has never been just a technology; its means are decentralization, its purpose is freedom. From a historical perspective, it is a hardcore liberalist experiment.

We all know that the 2008 global financial crisis completely eroded some people’s trust in centralized financial systems. Satoshi embedded that famous headline from The Times in the Bitcoin genesis block: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Of course, this is not just a technical detail; it is also a very clear political statement.

But Bitcoin didn’t appear out of nowhere. Before it, the cypherpunk movement had been brewing for twenty years: from David Chaum’s DigiCash, to Wei Dai’s b-money, to Hal Finney’s RPOW, a group of cryptographers and programmers had been trying to realize personal privacy and financial freedom through technical means. Nostalgia for the gold standard, Hayek’s monetary competition theory, the technological accumulation of cypherpunks, and the trust collapse caused by financial crises—all these threads converged in 2008 into a testable hypothesis: replace trust with cryptography, replace institutions with protocols, replace laws with code, and see what happens.

This is essentially one of the core assumptions of liberalism—whether individuals can self-organize, self-govern, and take responsibility without Leviathan’s backing. And blockchain, for the first time, put this question into large-scale real-world testing. No labs, no ethics committees, the control group is the centuries-old traditional financial system, the subjects are real people, and the stakes are real money.

And there’s another often overlooked point: blockchain is inherently financial. Decentralization is extremely costly and inefficient; the same data must be redundantly stored and repeatedly verified across thousands of nodes worldwide, compressing throughput to single digits per second. Such a slow and expensive system isn’t suitable for storing videos, running AI, or social media. The fields truly willing to pay such high costs for decentralization are fundamentally financial, because finance’s core is trust—and trust costs far more than computing power. The Bitcoin white paper’s title is very clear: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. From day one, this has been about money.

Q: From the results, what has this “liberalist experiment” verified?

It has verified that both the benefits and costs of freedom are real.

First, the benefits. One of blockchain’s most core capabilities is resistance to censorship—and this is not an abstract concept but repeatedly validated by reality. In 2010, WikiLeaks was fully blocked by financial institutions; Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal cut off its funding channels, depriving it of the ability to receive donations. Bitcoin became the only uncensorable channel.

Stablecoins are another validation from the demand side. Their importance isn’t in how elegant the concept is, but in the fact that real people need a value channel that’s less easily controlled. For Argentine families, USDT is the most convenient way to hedge against local currency devaluation; for traders in sanctioned countries, it’s the only access point to global trade settlement; for Afghan women, it’s a way to bypass family control and preserve personal savings.

But there’s a critical paradox here: the most successful products of this liberalist experiment are built on the premise that they are not fully decentralized. USDT, issued centrally by Tether, can be frozen. In other words, the success of stablecoins is a compromise on the experimental hypothesis—the users may not necessarily want pure decentralization; they want a relatively unrestrained channel that’s less subject to local authorities. Whether this channel remains centralized at the other end doesn’t matter much to many users.

As for the costs, freedom has never been a free lunch. The other side of this experiment is a dark forest without police, courts, or insurance companies. LUNA is a prime example. The Anchor protocol promised a 19.5% annual yield, while U.S. Treasuries at the time yielded less than 4%. This yield didn’t come from real economic activity but relied on token issuance and latecomer funds—essentially a classic Ponzi scheme dressed as an “algorithmic stablecoin.” Within three days, $40 billion evaporated. Then came Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, FTX—one after another collapsing.

The so-called “decentralized” industry is actually highly interconnected, centralized, and fragile. SBF was sentenced to 25 years, Do Kwon to 15, Celsius’s founder to 12—some of the most prominent founders in the industry are writing footnotes to “freedom” with collective imprisonment.

Q: Why does this experiment, under the banner of freedom, always evolve into speculation, centralization, and narrative fanaticism?

Because technology can change rules, but it cannot automatically change human nature. Many people have an overly high expectation of blockchain, as if as long as the underlying protocol is sufficiently decentralized, the upper layers will naturally develop free order. But that’s not how reality works. As long as participants are human, markets will inevitably form new narratives, new centers, new authorities, and cycles of emotion-driven speculation.

From altcoins, ICOs, DeFi, NFTs to MEME, a clear trend emerges: each wave’s technical content is decreasing, while speculation purity is increasing, and cycles are shortening. To some extent, MEME coins are the most honest, because they almost no longer pretend to be “technological revolutions” or “paradigm shifts.” Buyers aren’t investing in assets—they’re investing in participation, belonging, and the emotional experience of “being in the game.”

Bull markets are essentially processes of amplified consensus. Halving events provide initial ignition, but what truly determines the duration of a rally is how much new capital is willing to enter the same narrative. In recent cycles, narratives have become lighter, and speculation faster. This also shows that often, what’s traded isn’t the technology itself, but the narrative, identity, and emotion. Because of this, a project that initially aimed to bypass central authorities and institutions still ends up generating new centers and new fanaticism.

Therefore, the most interesting aspect of blockchain isn’t whether it has realized a purely ideal world, but how thoroughly it exposes a fact: on top of decentralized protocols, humans will still recreate centralized beliefs and speculative structures.

Q: Where do you see the future of this liberalist experiment in blockchain heading?

I’m not pessimistic, but I also don’t think it will become, as many imagine, a “future infrastructure” that covers everyone.

The demand for blockchain is real, but the ceiling isn’t as high as market imagination suggests. How many people need to bypass capital controls? How large are the scenarios requiring anonymous transactions? What proportion of the global population needs to circumvent traditional financial intermediaries? These are real but limited markets. The truly in-need individuals have already been using it.

A major past misconception in the industry was treating a niche but genuine demand as a universal infrastructure to rebuild the entire world. Billions of dollars poured into payments, social media, gaming—all based on a false assumption: that ordinary people generally need decentralization. But in reality, most ordinary people don’t need it; they care more about convenience, security, and low barriers. So, the people willing to use Alipay are obviously more numerous than those willing to manage private keys themselves.

But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. Quite the opposite—if it can solve some real problems, it’s already significant. Just as the printing press challenged the church’s monopoly on knowledge, and the internet challenged traditional media’s control of information, blockchain is fundamentally challenging the monopoly of financial intermediaries over value flow. For the first time on a global scale, this capability to store and transfer value without relying on a single institution has become accessible to ordinary people. This change might take decades to fully manifest, but the direction is irreversible.

In a world where bank accounts can be frozen, currencies can be infinitely diluted, and financial institutions can impose arbitrary limits, a value transfer network that no one can completely shut down is inherently meaningful. It may not belong to everyone, but its existence will permanently alter boundaries. Once this door is opened, it can never be closed again.

Q: One last question—what advice would you give to ordinary participants?

True freedom isn’t about owning a decentralized wallet; it’s about having a mind that isn’t hijacked by collective emotions. This industry is full of fanaticism, scams, self-righteous idealists, and bloodthirsty speculators. Most projects will go to zero, most narratives will be forgotten, and most participants will lose money. In a market without cash flow, intrinsic value, or safety margins, what you ultimately invest in is often not a project but your own judgment.

Every deep reading, every forced reflection, every internal dialogue without avoidance is expanding your ability not to be swept away by narratives. In the fast-evolving fields of crypto and related technologies, what can truly survive cycles isn’t a particular narrative but the ability to remain unaffected by narratives.