Prediction evidence

In reply to · 6 Oct 2026, 04:59 UTC · context given to the AI

It’s hard to point to exactly where things went wrong but there used to be a lot more mission focus in this space. You rarely hear about decentralization and why it’s important anymore. Probably the focus on getting a BTC ETF / “institutions” involved. This made it clear people cared about number go up over BTC being anti-establishment, a tool for freedom, savings, etc. While institutions are absolutely important for improving and modernizing financial infrastructure (Ethereum/Solana/DeFi), they’re really not for BTC. But they were needed to make price go up. The natural response of new people coming into the space is to see it as a way to strike it rich. The vast majority of new entrants are coming in with 2-5 figs. They realize they can’t get rich from buying 15,000 sats so naturally they turn to speculation, leverage and memecoins. The vast majority of onchain activity is related to these things. Launchpads and perps platforms succeed because this is what most users want. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this and for most it goes in the same bucket as dudes ripping 8 leg parlays. In the earlier days it was easy to just ignore when DOGE was the only coin but now it’s everywhere you look. Sharp traders naturally seek out the least informed counterparties and the rest, as they say, is history. There’s probably nothing anyone could have done to make it any other way. All the blame goes towards exchanges, launchpads, “extractors” but in retrospect, it is obvious this was always the inevitable path of a permissionless sandbox. It’s a bit surreal to see this and the “real stuff” all happening at the same time. In the original DeFi telegram the first topic of conversation was whether to call it DeFi or OpFi (Open Finance). DeFi won out back then but as we see more tokenized RWA, centralized stablecoins, CFTC/SEC involvement, and big TradFi players planting their roots in every corner of the market, it’s clear that OpFi was more appropriate. Anyway since that ethos is dead hopefully the institutions can at least adopt our perps ways and manifest the pump on our bags before someone tries to shut down the blockchains in 2029 🚀