In a recent podcast appearance, Wintermute's founder made an interesting point: the crypto industry is drifting far away from its original cypherpunk ideals.

Certainly, there are outwardly positive developments like increased adoption by governments and Wall Street, but in reality, the entire industry is overly obsessed with "raising numbers." In other words, it’s completely dominated by financialization and speculation, moving further away from the original goal of building a decentralized financial system.

It’s like losing sight of the core cypherpunk essence. Instead of escaping government and bank control, it now feels like it has become just another investment target.

Looking at Ethereum as an example, it’s easy to understand. Despite TVL exceeding $120 billion, it’s pointed out that most of that is "dormant capital." Only a small portion is actually used for economic activity. The same situation exists on other chains like Solana, and real-world adoption of DeFi remains more limited than expected.

Compared to traditional financial systems, the scale is truly negligible. I think this is a pretty important point. We need to reconsider where the crypto industry is heading.