If Ethereum was to somehow disappear tomorrow, I truly would not know what I would do with my life. This ecosystem grabbed hold of me in early 2017 and has not let me go since - I personally have not even thought about leaving to do something different and as Mike notes below, very few people actually go back to the old world once they’ve been ‘crypto-pilled’.
Working in the crypto ecosystem just hits differently - you feel as if you are actually making a change in the world and that you’re contributing to something greater than yourself. Contrast crypto’s open and permissionless nature to the traditional finance/web2 world’s closed and permissioned one - the two couldn’t be anymore different. Because of this, the two ecosystems attract very different sets of people - one optimizes for those who are happy with the status quo and the other optimizes for the dreamers, disruptors and innovators.
I know this comparison is overdone but I think a lot of the young people in crypto see this ecosystem as a way to make up for not being old enough during the early internet days (I include myself in this cohort). Young people typically have grand visions of a better future and many of them want to actually help usher that along in a relatively unrestricted way. Of course, they could try to effect change via politics or get involved with large corporations but that tends to be extremely inefficient and generally cumbersome. So instead, these people typically join tech-related startups because they know it offers them a better chance at actually making a change on top of having potentially better long-term wealth prospects.
In saying that, where would these people go if they wanted to disrupt finance? Sure, they could join a “fintech” startup that builds products that sit on top of legacy finance rails and is restricted by all of that or they could build in DeFi and have an unrestricted greenfield to build whatever you want. On top of this, the DeFi ecosystem is still so young that literally anyone can come along and build a billion-dollar protocol - they don’t even have to use their public persona! I don’t think I’m alone in believing that traditional/legacy finance has already lost to DeFi - it’s just going to take time for the world to adapt to this new era.
So, as I’ve stated plenty of times in this newsletter and on my YouTube channel, if you aren’t working in crypto yet - you should be. There’s just too much opportunity in this ecosystem and we’re just too early to sit back and not seize the day. I truly do believe that crypto is a bigger revolution than the internet was because it touches both technology and finance which are the two sectors with some of the largest total addressable markets.
So, what are you waiting for? Come work in crypto today.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.