What 12 years in crypto taught me about the long game
The free market enables people to cooperate in unpredictable ways, often generating extraordinary outcomes. Thanks to crypto, economic, technological, and cultural growth is accelerating faster than ever. As we navigate this landscape, which choices will yield the greatest positive impact for us and the world?
Life tends to put us at a crossroads:
At 20, do you chase your dream of performing or go to school?
At 30, do you pivot careers or double down?
At 40, do you start your own firm or remain with the company?
Here’s a heuristic I’ve come to trust when you hit a fork while evaluating people, projects, assets, or ecosystems:
Which is the path of the believer, and which is the path of the profiteer?
Opportunistic Profiteers Good Not Great
The term isn’t meant to be cynical. Profiteers play key roles. Traders, for example, bring liquidity, efficiency, price signals, and valuable insights to markets.
Profiteers see the world as a poker game with one objective: extracting value. They know they must provide value to earn it in return, yet they’re always looking for an edge. They shift capital from the sucker to the sharp through complex, productive systems designed primarily to serve individual gain.
People get rich trading, yield farming, arbitraging, launching memecoins, lending, running gambling apps, or flipping startups they don’t even care about, but these strategies won’t yield the highest returns.
Conviction Is a Compass
High‑conviction believers deliver the greatest outcomes.
Satoshi didn’t build Bitcoin to optimize his own payout. Vitalik’s vision is to create a public good, not chase personal gain. Early founders like Brian Armstrong (Coinbase) and Jesse Powell (Kraken) weren’t aiming for quick exits.
In my own experience, following the profiteer’s path always left me struggling. Even when I was successful, I questioned my strategy and my purpose on a deeper, existential level. Only when I followed the believer’s path did I feel truly on the right course. It’s a difficult distinction to make but worth considering.
The market is a brutal teacher. It demands constant adaptation and second-guessing, yet paradoxically rewards those who stick to a durable long‑term strategy. Ultimately, it’s impossible to be great at anything without believing in it for years if not decades.
Outsized outcomes rarely come from gambling, hedging, flipping, or operating with a high time‑preference. The optimal path is to tap into the zeitgeist, find something you truly believe in, and dig in for the long term with no finish line in sight.
If I’d understood this at 34 instead of 44, I’d likely be much further ahead financially. Still, it’s never too late to refine your outlook on life and business, and execute decisively on the ideas you believe in. Live and learn. You’ll never be younger than you are today.
When I reach 54, God willing, I hope I can look back on this post and feel at peace knowing I gave what I could to what I believed in.
Gut Check
When deciding what to learn, where to invest, what to work on, or who to partner with, don’t depend only on analysis. Tune into your inner compass and consider:
How does it feel to engage with certain people and ideas?
What is the future I want to work toward?
Who is a true believer?