Escape from the Path of Hegemony: Cryptocurrency Philosophy from Wintermute Founder

After nearly a decade in the cryptocurrency industry, Evgeny Gaevoy, founder of Wintermute, has realized that the industry has lost its way. Not because of prices or technology, but because we’ve forgotten the original path we should take. And that path, he says, is the way to escape the imperial route that humanity has been drawn into.

This is not an article about profits or trading strategies. It’s a statement about the nature of freedom, independence, and the struggle between personal privacy and corporate-government control.

Lessons from “The Golden Path”: Why Great Empires Always Fall

Gaevoy often quotes from the science fiction novel “Dune,” especially the fourth part—“Dune Messiah.” In it, the concept of the “Golden Path” describes a thousand-year plan: humanity must go through unstable phases because prolonged comfort is the death of progress.

The core lesson is simple but profound: every empire—whether a nation or a corporation—tends to centralize power. Initially, this brings efficiency and stability. But over time, it becomes an obstacle to change, ultimately leading to collapse. The problem is: the fall of a great empire can take humanity down with it.

Gaevoy emphasizes that we are born with a tendency to favor stability and build larger, stronger structures. But each time we do, when they collapse, the destruction is even more catastrophic. Worse, we can build an empire so large that it has the potential to destroy civilization itself.

Thus, history cycles: chaos → self-organization → empire → collapse. The key point is that during development, we should embrace diversity rather than be tempted by the promises of stability from a new empire, no matter how attractive it seems.

Three Options Ahead: Which Path for Cryptocurrency in the Future?

Looking at the present, Gaevoy sees three possible paths:

First: Traditional finance wants to control crypto. Blockchain becomes the foundational technology for existing financial systems—just faster, with fewer intermediaries. Bitcoin becomes “digital gold” held by governments, big corporations, and ETFs. Stablecoins are fully regulated. All comply with KYC/AML. The result? Great technology, but the empire path continues—just with a new interface.

Second: Governments relinquish control over blockchain. Everything runs on permissionless ledgers. Cryptocurrency develops into a parallel system worth trillions. A free world—but this is almost entirely an illusion. Gaevoy calls this a “dream victory.”

Third: Build a truly independent system. This is the hardest path, requiring continuous effort. A blockchain system that exists parallel to and independent of the current financial world, immune to control by courts or administrative bodies.

Clearly, Gaevoy is not interested in the first option. It only helps current machines run smoother. The second is purely a fantasy—governments will never voluntarily relinquish sovereignty. A casino cannot freely open on Solana, and the CFTC cannot ignore decentralized exchanges that don’t comply with regulations.

That path isn’t truly independent—it’s still the empire route, just with a different face.

The Maze of Misconceptions: Why the Industry Has Forgotten Its Lessons

From 2022 to 2024, the crypto industry has truly weathered a storm: SEC and CFTC oversight, the collapse of FTX/Alameda, and nearly a handful of centralized entities almost buying up half the industry. What should we learn from this?

Quite the opposite. Instead of doubling down on freedom and independence, we believe that simply “placing the right people in the right positions” will lead to victory. That’s the empire path—just with different drivers.

Meanwhile, the industry has complained for years about poor user experience—Bitcoin is inconvenient, or hacked. But what if we’re completely wrong? What if those inconveniences are the price we pay for sovereignty? What if that’s the culture we need to actively accept?

Gaevoy doesn’t claim that current tools like MetaMask are the pinnacle of innovation. Nor does he demand everyone engrave seed phrases on metal. But he emphasizes: we should optimize user experience with the goal not of reaching 50% of the population, but 50% of those who truly need sovereignty—people in developing countries witnessing erosion of democracy, or in developed nations where privacy laws increasingly resemble China and Russia.

The goal shouldn’t be “resisting surveillance or government.” It should be creating something they cannot control at all.

Building a Parallel System: The True Path to Escape

So what exactly should we do? Gaevoy offers some practical principles:

Choose permissionless, sovereign protocols. Avoid black-box offline solutions. DAOs are theoretically correct, but most current DAOs are just governance shows—they remain fully controlled by centralized entities.

Learn to be independent of centralized systems. Or know how to switch instantly if an external party disconnects you. This includes infrastructure (cloud servers, large models), social coordination tools, and of course stablecoins.

Reinstate algorithmic stablecoins. We were wrong for immersing ourselves in Ponzi-like models. DAI and UST aren’t fundamentally wrong; the mistake was adding USDC into DAI and funneling unsustainable profits into UST. First, we need to build a truly parallel economy.

Protect privacy. Use whatever tools necessary, as long as they work. Weak points to avoid: fiat on/off ramps, app stores, DNS, centralized exchanges, social platforms, and centralized stablecoins that can be frozen at any moment.

A single sentence sums it all up: We must create a place where ordinary people can exist without asking for permission from anyone.

Dispersed and Existing: The Price of Independence

The ending of “Dune” is “Dispersal”—the emperor is dead, humanity scatters into space. After the events from 2022 to 2024, the crypto industry should remember this lesson.

Gaevoy admits that right now, not everyone has a choice. Some are imprisoned in their own countries. Some are bound by responsibilities they bear themselves. And he predicts that in the coming years, the reasons to escape the empire path will only grow.

Complete escape into a parallel world of “better” crypto is impossible—at least for now. But at the very least, we can build something—tools, systems, communities—that future generations can use to escape the empire route. So that the real world and the crypto world can coexist without encroaching on each other.

The only thing worth building is tools for escape. Even if crypto is no longer trendy (which it surely will not be), it can still operate normally, unaffected by external events.

Most of us will continue to live with empires—due to responsibilities, comfort, money, or other goals understandable to all. That’s not the issue. But a small group will keep building escape routes. Those are the ones who will reclaim what we’ve lost—freedom, personal sovereignty, and the right to exist without permission.

That is the path—the path to escape the empire route.