Crypto Isn’t Broken—It’s Undefined (And That’s the Opportunity)

What previous generations believed to be firm, wrote the Austrian poet Hofmannsthal, "was in fact 'das Gleiten der Dinge"—the slipping-away of things. The rich man in his castle, and the poor man at his gate. WWI would break out 12 years after he wrote those words.

Crypto today lives in that same slipstream—an idea too big, too vague, and too early to be one thing. The technology is real, the promise is loud, but the definition? Still dissolving. In the vacuum, a race is unfolding: whoever captures the next 10X will define crypto.

mert | helius.dev @0xMert_ "everyone would do well to remember that crypto is still anyone's game any and all chains can get displaced, rise, or burn down this is not a static game; time always progresses forward which means that the only way to win is to keep playing — and the easiest way to lose is to think you have won"

Everything Is a Market Now

In that fog of fluid definitions, one moment seemed to give crypto its clearest shape: DeFi Summer.

For a few chaotic, glorious months in 2020, crypto wasn’t about ideals, or speculation, or even community—it was about pure financial engineering. Liquidity pools, yield farming, composability, and degenerate stacking of risk on risk—it felt like Wall Street got dropped into a video game and handed LSD.

What came out of it wasn’t just innovation. It was a new mindset—one that never really left.

I call it DeFi Manifest Destiny: the belief that everything-every action, every interaction, every moment online—should be turned into a financial product. That culture still dominates today. If something can be tokenized, yield-farmed, LP’d, or “incentivized,” someone will try it. Often, whether it needs it or not.

There’s now a protocol for monetizing your attention, your browsing history, your memes, even your vibes. DeFi Manifest Destiny doesn’t ask why—it only asks how much APY?

Decentralization Without PMF

While the DeFi Manifest Destiny marched forward, another force quietly took over: crypto VCs.

Over the last cycle, VCs raised billions on the promise of a new kind of internet—open, decentralized, censorship-resistant. It was a powerful story. But that story hasn't found product-market fit.

Look at stablecoins. They’re the most successful product in crypto—the thing people actually use. But they aren’t decentralized. Tether and USDC dominate the market. They’re centrally issued, centrally governed, and backed by traditional banking infrastructure. They win because they offer speed, liquidity, and capital efficiency.

The decentralized alternatives—Dai, algorithmic coins, exotic vault systems—never scaled. Too volatile. Too complex. Too capital inefficient.

Any readers who wish to become founders should keep in mind that your investors are there to make your dreams come true. Not to martyr yourself and your company to fit within their mandates.

Permissionless Still Wins

And yet, crypto has found product-market fit. Just not in the places the purists hoped.

Stablecoins are the clearest example. Yes, they’re centralized as hell. But their adoption has exploded. Tens of billions in circulation, trillions in volume. Why? Because putting USD in a software-defined system is simply better than legacy banking.

It’s not about ideology. It’s about experience. The alternative is waiting three days for an ACH transfer, dealing with wire cut-off times, or being locked out of your money on a weekend.

The market isn’t dumb. It isn’t ideological. It’s pragmatic. It doesn’t care about decentralization purity tests when permissionless access to dollars in a 24/7, programmable environment just works better.

That’s the quiet victory of crypto: not the narrative of decentralization, but the reality of removing friction. Permissionless innovation is still the beating heart of the space—it’s just wearing different clothes now.

So maybe crypto doesn’t need a perfect definition. Maybe it’s enough that it builds things the market actually uses. And maybe the real 10x moment won’t come from a new story, but from giving people something that works better than the thing they already have.