“I Wasted 8 Years in Crypto”: A Builder’s Exit Note Goes Viral Across Asia
“I’m NOT constructing a brand new monetary system. I constructed a on line casino.”
This stark admission from Ken Chan, former co-founder of derivatives protocol Aevo, has been reverberating throughout Asian crypto communities this week.
What started as (*8*) X has now crossed linguistic borders, been introduced to Chinese communities by native information media, and been widely shared among Korean traders, accumulating tens of millions of views alongside the way in which.
From Ayn Rand to Disillusionment: A Libertarian’s Journey Through Crypto
Chan’s confession shouldn’t be merely a critique—it’s the unraveling of a private ideology. He describes himself as a “starry-eyed libertarian” who donated to Gary Johnson’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign after being radicalized by Ayn Rand’s novels. The cypherpunk ethos of Bitcoin spoke on to this worldview. “Being capable of stroll throughout the border with a billion {dollars} in your head is and at all times might be a robust concept to me,” he writes.
Yet eight years of business expertise eroded that idealism. Chan recounts how the Layer 1 wars—the flood of capital into Aptos, Sui, Sei, ICP, and numerous others—produced no significant progress towards a brand new monetary system. Instead, it “actually torched everybody’s cash” in pursuit of changing into the subsequent Solana. His verdict is unsparing: “We don’t must construct the Casino on Mars.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Chan departed Aevo in May this 12 months. His private web site signifies he’s now engaged on KENSAT, a private satellite tv for pc venture. It is scheduled to launch aboard a Falcon 9 in June 2026. His confession arrives six months after his departure. It comes as AEVO token trades at roughly $45 million in absolutely diluted market cap—down roughly 99% from its peak.
The “Casino” Metaphor Lands Amid Market Exhaustion
Chan’s central metaphor—that crypto has turn out to be “the largest, on-line, multi-player 24/7 on line casino our technology has ever concocted”—cuts by means of technical complexity with visceral readability.
The timing amplifies the message. Following October’s market turbulence and chronic volatility, members throughout the area have been grappling with fatigue. The Chinese media framed the viral unfold as reflecting “collective nervousness amid liquidity drought and narrative vacuum.”
Chinese-language responses have been divided. Some pushed again sharply: “Same eight years—some attain the summit, others exit the stage. Wasting time is your personal downside.” Others went additional than Chan himself, with one commenter writing: “The whole crypto circle is silly, no exceptions. After greater than a decade, what blockchain product has the common individual really used?”
Korean responses echoed related exhaustion. “Besides stablecoins, there’s no actual use case,” famous one dealer. Another was extra blunt: “At the underside of crypto, there’s nobody creating new worth for society—simply scammers swarming to suck cash from retail buyers.”
Generational Anxiety Finds a Voice Across Borders
Perhaps most putting is Chan’s warning that the business’s “poisonous mentality will result in the long-term collapse of social mobility for the youthful technology.” This concern resonates deeply in East Asian societies. Traditional paths to wealth—actual property, secure employment—have grown more and more inaccessible. Crypto promised another; Chan suggests it might be accelerating the issue.
Korean analyst KKD Whale offered a parallel reflection with out immediately addressing Chan’s publish. “The period of standing alone with only one core ability is passing,” he wrote, recalling a proficient colleague who might compress eight hours of labor into one however by no means bothered to deepen his experience. The ability grew to become out of date; the individual moved on.
While Chan questions what the business has constructed, KKD Whale questions what people have amassed inside it. Both arrive on the similar unsettling vacation spot.
Chan closes with a quote from CMS Holdings: “Do you need to generate profits, or do you need to be proper?” His reply: “I select to be proper this time.”
Six months after leaving the venture he constructed, and with AEVO buying and selling at a fraction of its former worth, the query lingers: Is this the readability of hindsight, or the comfort of exit? The viral journey of his confession suggests many others are asking themselves the identical query.
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