10 years of crypto journey, but I am quitting.

Ten years in crypto have been quite a journey. I remember how hard it was to find quality content about crypto back then, when most of the material was still about earning free bitcoin faucets and anarcho-capitalists talking about bitcoin’s future.

There were only a few exchanges and most didn’t even require KYC. Altcoins were this hazy thing, you had to download the wallet to your PC and often the whole blockchain just to store your little coins. It was fun and innovative.

Ethereum started to take off in 2017 and smart contracts began pulling crypto out of the prehistoric era. An ICO here, another one there, tokens were being listed on exchanges with ridiculous pumps, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the pie and ICOs started crawling out of the gutter.

Masternodes, PoS coins, smart contracts, hard forks with miners and idealists still trying to be the lords of bitcoin. Bitcoin was still viewed with huge distrust by small investors, but that didn’t stop it from making the most memorable rally, going from 600 dollars in September 2016 to almost 20k in December 2017. It felt like the revolution of the century.

Then came the long winter in 2018. Bitcoin dropped more than 80 percent, but it was a pretty normal bear-market correction, maybe boosted by the frenzy of greedy and failed ICOs.

It took until the covid crash for the market to heat up again. The amount of money injected into the economy was insane. For a brief moment it felt like there were fewer projects than there was demand. It started with DeFi, the rise of DEXes, governance tokens and generous airdrops. For me that was the best moment in crypto, between 2020 and 2021. But as 2021 went on, the exuberance went way overboard. Crypto went mainstream with celebrities, meme coins, blockchain games, NFTs costing almost as much as a yacht, and ponzi schemes like Luna and FTX popping up and somehow reaching absurd valuations.

In 2022 reality hit hard and crypto collapsed like never before. Losses and bankruptcies were everywhere. BTC fell below its 2017 peak again and a lot of inexperienced investors who got caught in the hype the year before were wiped out. Even stablecoins were under extreme distrust. I remember coworkers asking for help with Metamask and buying NFTs, that was the ultimate bubble signal. These people will never come back to crypto, and who could blame them? Even experienced investors lost fortunes.

Then 2024 arrived and thanks to the first bitcoin spot ETF prices went up quickly, even before the halving cycle. It was the bitcoin dominance cycle. Only a few selected altcoins went up and those crazy altseasons were left behind. Even with a pro-crypto president the market didn’t heat up, the mood of distrust and resentment was still there. Any sign of buying or innovation that used to look like a game changer and a promising opportunity started to be seen as a scam. Controversial listings on big exchanges, insiders dumping, tokens that seemed created only to benefit a tiny group of sharks with no real value. There are way more tokens than the current cautious and selective demand can handle, barely any liquidity. I think even serious projects got hit by this paranoia and never took off.

My view is that crypto lost a big part of the ideology that made it interesting. For you to download an entire blockchain and store your little coins, someone had to really believe in that thing. There was an idea behind it, something that didn’t involve venture-capital money, shady insider allocations, or quick profits from futures trading. Crypto turned into pure speculation. Everything is easy now. A project appears and it’s already listed for derivatives trading, and people don’t care about anything else. They just see it drop 50 percent in a week and nobody wants it anymore. The promise of more liquidity came at a high price, with clueless investors and vultures who robbed and keep robbing the space.

Crypto turned into just trading, empty and random, nothing behind it, fast gains and goodbye. At least with stocks you can see some backing, results, profits, a business to evaluate. With crypto we are longing and shorting hot air without any real contact with the technology. Crypto is technology. It shouldn’t be just a TradingView chart. In the end crypto became and solidified itself as inferior to the stock market.

AI stocks are tied to products you actually use daily. Health-care stocks influence what you pay at the pharmacy. Defense stocks shape where a big chunk of taxpayer money goes.

Crypto is just money speculating on itself. There’s no substantial innovation anymore, nobody gets excited about using a smart contract or downloading a new wallet and appreciating a protocol’s tech. I still have my Monero wallet here in the old-school way, but one of the few coins that actually fulfills a real use case ends up banned from exchanges, and that says a lot.

Unfortunately I don’t see much of a future anymore. For all the reasons I mentioned, both financially and in terms of real innovation, the stock market has become way more interesting to follow and, to some degree, safer to invest in. That’s why I’m cashing out of crypto. I think it already served its purpose and its best days are behind it for good.