Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

Sometime in 2013 I was doubting to work with crypto. What made it clear for me, and this is the advice I still give friends today:

ask yourself this. Regardless of wether the crypto pricing goes up or down, regardless of wether there is major adoption or not. Will I get satisfaction from having built X? Will I look back after a decade and be grateful about my contribution?

So far, for me, the answer has been a no. I haven’t seen a use-case in crypto that excites me and is worth working on. The money would have been nice, but I’m in a luxury position where I’d rather spend my time working on useful things.

But again, that’s just my personal position and I accept that everyone is different.

I left earlier this year, and worked in the space for a couple of years. I started with a neutral position on crypto, I didn't even think about it much. More like, its easy and pays well. But if people want to waste their money on tokens, go for it, but its not my cup of tea.

Then I started to recognize that its predatory and actually not benign or harmless. It is taking advantage of people. It started to become gross, and nobody I worked with shared any views or skepticism that I had. They all pretty much treated it like a religion across the board. Glad I left. I turned down money that most would not get a chance at in their lifetime, but where that money came from did not sit right with me, nobody in that company deserved any of it. I guess I was not cutthroat enough ... seems like this space is reserved only for snakes, and fools.

I've worked at a crypto startup few years ago, on a quite high technical position, essentially a co-founder (one of many). The team ended up bullying, abusing and gaslighting me, because I didn't fit the narrative, I guess.

Cryptosphere is certainly a place for predators, that don't give a slightest f*ck about where the money come from.

> Cryptosphere is certainly a place for predators, that don't give a slightest f*ck about where the money come from.

No many do care where it comes from.

They deliberately seek and out target vulnerable people e.g. third world countries, retirees who they know will be susceptible to their scams.

> Anyone else in a similar position?

I’ve worked in fintech and recently transitioned to cryptocurrencies (implementing cryptography). The backlash I received from my peers for even going into finance was very comparable.

> the constant backlash from the public is nagging me

I’ve lost friends, and I’ve resorted to say that I work with cryptography (which is 100% true, but omits the application).

It feels like you need to either double down on your beliefs or selectively inform people what you do for a living, to keep working with crypto.

It’s hard to be a conscientious cypherpunk when you see how average people will bend towards being cheated by stonks.

Since people’s judgement matters to you, consider working with something that you’re proud to tell people. That’s part of why I quit my first job in finance.

When friends of friends ask for investment advice, I don’t get back to them; it feels like selling people drugs. I don’t mind that they invest, but I spent years understanding the landscape, and I avoid most of what I see, including NFTs.

> will I be unemployable

Yes, your skills and personality will get you another job. Presumably, the technical level of your current job is the best you’ve done so far.

If you’re reading Hacker News, you’re over-exposed to the criticism. In reality, people don’t think that much about it.

I'm one of the "haters". I see no value in crypto in 99.99% of crypto and in the cases that do make sense the actual use for it is borderline money laundering or tax evasion. All the "enthusiasts" seem to want to get rich by getting as many people as they can in their greater fool scheme of choice in the hopes of becoming a Bitcoin billionaire. The obnoxious fan base and practical scams coming out of the marketing department are what I despise most about the whole thing.

However, I don't foster any negative feelings towards developers per se. A job's a job, and crypto isn't exactly as easy as your run of the mill CRUD application development.

By working in the ethereum space you've proven you can work with/around obscure tools, learn strange jargon, probably have some knowledge of cryptographic algorithms, and a willingness to do a deep dive in what you believe in. I'm no hiring manager, but to me that all seems like a bunch of skills that will transfer to many businesses outside crypto.

There's more to a person than what areas of business they have experience in. You can work for Big Oil, Facebook/Google/UmbrellaCorp, or Nestlé and be a perfectly good person just doing their job. Anyone refusing you simply because you worked in crypto at some point is short-sighted.

Even if you are a crucial part in the next big rug-pull-sold-as-ending-world-hunger, I honestly doubt you'll run into too many ethical qualms unless you screw up enough to actually break the law and get caught. It's not like Meta or Wells Fargo suddenly care about ethics if you can talk things straight enough, most big companies are morally bankrupt anyway.

I've been in crypto since 2014.

I just had the California Franchise Tax Board literally steal money out of a bank account of mine without any warning or notice. They left $0.01 in there and charged a $125 fee. I found out today they are claiming I owe taxes from when I wasn't even living in the country (and I was paying taxes then too!). In 2021/2022, I paid more taxes than I ever have in my life. I even over paid just to make sure that I was fully covered, including additional property taxes now that I purchased a place. I'm not some crypto tax dodger at all, I pay more than my fair share because that is the right thing to do.

Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash (thankfully they picked the 'wrong' account!). I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this?

Things like this really make me want to double down on crypto. Not your keys, not your coins is taking on a whole new meaning for me. It is easy to say "well, that's never happened to me. crypto is a waste. i have no use for this stuff", but if all it takes is some faceless government entity to wipe out your entire bank account without any notice... then obviously something is wrong with the system.

As for future employability... that's silly. Any place that wouldn't hire you because of where you worked in the past isn't a place you'd want to work at anyway. I hire people because they have the skills and attitude that I'm looking for.

Had similar experience when I was out working in Berlin. I had a gym membership in one part of the city (paid up 12 months in advance in cash). Moved to a different part of the city and didn't go back. Fast forward about six months, two bald headed goons came knocking at my old address looking for me, with a 1850 euro bill.

Gym membership for the next year plus a 900 euro service charge because I hadn't written a letter starting my intention not to renew by 90 days of the time of an automatic roll over.

Luckily for me, the Aussie guy staying in my old place told them I'd moved into a squat and they'd have to serve notice on two dozen angry punks if they wanted their money. Never heard from them again.

But I was lucky, if I'd given them a bank account the full amount would have been charged straight away, with no comeback or way to get my money back for a service I didn't use, and the bank would be absolutely fine with that. Shortly after I moved much of my funds into crypto, and would do it again for the security from arbitrary seizure.

I too had something like this happen. After a burnout and extensive travel I somehow got my whole account frozen and emptied just after I got back home.

I spend weeks begging friends to pay my bills (i.e. server bills, domains, ...) Because otherwise my business would have died because I couldn't pay for anything. It took several weeks until I had a cash flow established again.

In no world am I going to trust a bank with my active money anymore. I rather loose 50% within a week than everything within a day.

Edit:// or the one time I couldn't buy any food before Monday because I forgot (or rather didn't care) Thursday and Friday is a holiday and transferred money on Wednesday afternoon only to arrive on Monday at noon. And this is within the same bank!

Also: Imagine doing international business like a SaaS in a Industrie Visa/MasterCard doesn't allow. Without crypto I would be having 50 PayPal (Payeer, PM, ...) like accounts from several countries and fees multiplying all over.

Edit2:// Or when I was living abroad but couldn't open a bank account because I also live in Switzerland and EU banks are afraid of money laundering so much that they simply refuse to open an account for someone that could 'launder so easy'. Even thought I do have an EU passport, and a legit business.

> Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash. I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this?

Same.

It's insane how little control and power you have as an average person. Your bank accounts can be frozen on a whimp, you can be put into a jail with no attorney because you cannot use your own money to pay for them and forced to confess to something you never did, then slave away for the state.

There are too many laws everywhere which means you've broken some. The only difference between you and the person who got caught is selective enforcement and someone wanting to make an example or fulfil their own goals.

And financial system will snitch on all of it.

You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

Countries impose financial and currency controls against the benefit of the people all the time.

It's not "freedom" if you cannot choose to take your money outside.

It's fucked up how normalised limiting freedom has become. You don't notice it. The state controls so much of your money forcefully with a threat of violence and isolation.

Your money that you work hard for, sweat for, break your bones for.

Yes. All of this is why "web3" is not bullshit and why I've dedicated years of my energy and my funds to it.

Try living in another country too, I have. Banking is the number one pain point. Even more than language issues. Ever tried to get your own money out of a western union in a country that doesn't speak your language?

If you're doubting "web3" then you've probably never experienced these sorts of pain yourself and I could understand your trepidation. But since I'm understanding you, how about understanding me too.

IMO, the term web3 is tainted by VCs using retail to dump their tokens faster than they can dump equity in traditional IPO which is less transparent to average schmuck because most of the money comes from the retirement funds passively investing in everything.

It's their shortcut to liquidity which resulted in overpromises and dumps.

It's not unreasonable for someone to be sceptical but to dismiss it all together is a mistake.

We need to go back to the core. Decentralized financial instruments built to help people prosper economicly. To uplift poor people in unbanked countries. To stop dictators from rugging poor people and investors. To provide individual freedom and highest level of personal attainment.

The yield bullshit needs to stop.

Edit: I don't mean all yield strategies, just ones which are unsustainable (most of them).

I want unsecured lending products in crypto based on on-chain reputation which happens automatically on taking small loans or doing a lot of transactions maybe endorsement system where institutions stake money in return of verification.

Banks won't provide loans to people who need them the most. Even self employment people and founders with millions of dollars in exit struggle with a home loan because banks refuse to deal with anyone who doesn't fit their cookie cutter.

I believe crypto has potential to disrupt it.

I love flash loans for this exact reason. They are unique to crypto, allowing freedom to anyone to increase market efficiency by taking advantage of arbitrage without creditionals and needing absurd amount of capital to start.

Certainly, the marketing around web3 went to shit. But I've been in it for 4 years now so I don't really care about the VC's because I see the larger picture already.

I agree with everything you said, but the end. The ponzi tokenomics definitely needs to stop, but the lego yield stuff has potential. It is more than just unbanked, it is people without lines of credit. It is teaching people how to be fiscally responsible.

Based on my Vietnam example below. Woman with gold teeth instead deposits her stable money into her phone. That money earns yield automatically. She can also use a portion of it as collateral for a Kiva-style loan to help with her farm crops (or whatever small business she has). People who buy her products effectively pay back her loan directly by submitting to her phone app. She's in control of it herself.

> You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

That’s because privacy against the state is at odds with enforcing the state’s laws. From a state-centric perspective, money is “good citizen behaviour” points. If you maintain a job deemed valuable, the bank prints you money to buy a house, etc. You have to know what people used their money on to assess if that’s good behaviour or not.

There are a lot of stories like this. There are also a lot of unbanked people (1.7 billion worldwide). People who fail to see the value in Bitcoin/crypto often are not aware of those very real problems people are facing. Traditional banking is great so long as you are on the happy path.

In northern Vietnam, where I've done extensive travel, to this day, women store their meager wealth in gold fillings because that is the only place where they can put it and not have it stolen from them. There is no bank where they can deposit funds and even if there was, the Vietnam govt's version of FDIC is like $2k.

Amazingly, they also have smart phones and the government has put 4G towers through the whole country and in the most remote places.

That's our usecase right there.

Being in Vietnam i can attest the gap, and the gap also exists within the country. It isn't unusual to see customers at Starbucks opening their wallet to show they filled all the debit card pockets in full.

The population has an instinctive distrust for centralised authorities for the most part. Although very patriotic, they wouldn't place their life's worth of wealth in any of the several government controlled banks. Nor to the more independent or even foreign banks either. And it's good that way, Vietnam has a thriving crypto scene and may very well be one of top adopters of crypto. For what business use case they don't know quite yet, but it will come.

They do, but such event is rather considered the victim's fault for being a careless idiot. Stealing a phone isn't more an act of selfish robbery than a merciless lesson for those who don't keep valuable items safe. Better the phone than the house!

Same is true for Bangladesh, India, Philippines, etc. They all have good Internet connectivity but too many unbanked people.

Mobile wallets are quite popular for the unbanked in those countries. You don’t need a decentralised ledger for that.

Yes, in a similar situation. I started a generic business in "real time analytics", but found that most of the demand was in Crypto so have been increasingly pulled into it.

I have always had a similar view to yourself, that a lot of the coins/tokens were silly, but DeFi and smart contracts were genuinely innovative and useful.

I've kind of held back from jumping in fully committed to Crypto because I'm very torn by the whole space and almost semi-reluctant to being associated with it.

I feel like with the recent declines in interest I should probably walk away at this moment and I find something I care about more.

Zoom and Netflix both lost 60-80% of their value in the last year and I don't see anyone declaring them dead. I don't work in crypto but I think there's a bit of a knee jerk reaction to seeing all the vaporware projects being wiped out (rightfully so). Consolidation and pruning of wasteful projects is good. If you feel like the work you're personally doing is positive, then don't worry about people dancing on the graves of LUNA and Celsius. ETH is still a legitimate technology with real use cases.

ETH has been a legitimate technology with real use cases for a decade now and all we’ve got is jpeg’s of apes. With the amount of real money, talent and hard work being pumped into this space we should have seen the use cases materialize by now. But there’s nothing. I’m sure someone uses it for something real, but I haven’t seen crypto actually solve a real problem any better than a plain old database. Please correct me if I’m wrong,

you are completely wrong. I don't want to explain other use cases here but even though for jpeg's of ages, Ethereum or blockchain industry created a more inclusive economy. (now all the artists, they know at least one more way to monetize their art.)

It's an alternative financial system with many of the same (and some different) primitives than the existing ones: Liquidity via AMMs (instead of human or HFT MMs), derivatives, loans, yields, fixed-rate instruments, etc. These are used in the same way the equivalents in TradFi are used, just implemented differently, permissionless and with an API.

I believe that many people don't understand the traditional financial world or how any of the above are useful. They want to see something like Twitter on the Blockchain because that's what they can wrap their head around. That's why so many people in the crypto space come from a more traditional finance background. They understand how the above instruments are crucial for an economy even though they are not end-user products like Twitter is. They are one layer below that.

Also, the decade argument is misleading in the case of Ethereum. It's true that ETH itself has been around for a while, but DeFi with sufficient liquidity has really only been a thing for 2-3 years and has made quite rapid progress since then.

ETH launched in 2015, which is 7 years ago, and has been working through fundamental limitations of the technology, building out the technological primitives that will enable mass-consumer blockchain applications in the future.

A list of areas where Ethereum has made huge progress:

* building secure smart contracts - more sophisticated auditing programmes by more experienced companies, improvements in programming languages, including Solidity, and improvements in formal verification techiques, have reduced the prevalence of major hacks of blue chip smart contracts significantly since 2015

* enabling privacy with public validation. Zk-SNARK and other zkp based mixers have gone from theory to reality with the launches of Tornado Cash, the AZTEC Network, and CAPE.

* Protocol fine-tuning, like the implementation of EIP1559, to improve fee predictability

* The creation of a Proof of Stake consensus protocol that maintains the same decentralization of Proof of Work, while providing a given level of security at a much lower economic cost

* Scalability technologies like Optimistic and ZK-Rollups

* Protocol upgrades like sharding to expand the capabilities of Rollups

These all took time to build, and will take more time still to reach production quality, but are shaping up to provide a vastly more useful blockchain platform than what was launched in 2015.

I'm still not sure why all of that is useful. A lot of clever infrastructure, but for exactly what?

Also, it's worth reminding people that ETH might be useful, but still worth less than its current price. There's a ton of speculation propping up the current price.

Your bullet points list a bunch of navel-gazing crypto improvements for crypto, but the previous poster was asking for examples where "crypto actually solve[a] a real problem any better than a plain old database". Got any?

Use case: decentralized, censorship-resistant, programmable money. Sorry if it takes more than a decade to disrupt the most entrenched and powerful status quo on earth.

Personally, I never thought it would come this far so quickly, and am quite happy with the pace of adoption and progress.

> decentralized, censorship-resistant, programmable money

accepted by nobody who has something valuable to offer

You're not wrong. The entire cryprocurrency space has been a colossal waste of time and energy.

I don’t walk into your domain of expertise and pretend I know shit. Why do you think you can do that about the domain of others? If that is your state of knowledge on ETH, then stop perpetuating a narrative that is false and has been planted in your mind by people who think they know better what’s good for you. Stop being a victim of other people and develop your own thoughts. You’re welcome.

The above commentator didn’t pretend to know anything. It’s an honest question and they asked with utmost humility.

Here’s the question: what’s stopping a significant adoption of blockchain technology from a _business perspective_.

I have my own take on this. It could be the increasing cost of transactions (in practice). Not indifferent from your current day financial systems, as we have inflation that causes costs to rise. Perhaps it’s the sudden rise, the volatile nature of fluctuations that make it different for crypto currencies. Perhaps the entire issue here is we measure fluctuations against fiat currency.

As more businesses start to operate entirely in crypto (producers and consumers) - we may see a more stable crypto ecosystem.

As for why is blockchain not gaining traction, it is somewhat related to above. Miners provide the backbone for any successful blockchain network. In a centralized system where all actors already trust the centralized authority, there is little business incentive in setting up a sophisticated ecosystem based on blockchain.

I’ve heard about governments considering using blockchain based tech to thwart internal corruption (immutable public records FTW). As these systems are developed, researched and then evangelized by the likes of HBR, we’ll start to see much greater adoption in time IMO.

People like you are exactly the problem..provide a real use case where crypto and Blockchain have revolutionized something and then talk. You can't seem to do that.

Blockchain tech does not need to "revolutionize" anything. It just needs to be useful for (some) people in any of the cases where the status quo fail.

If 1% of the people can not use traditional banking, but they have an blockchain-based alternative, then blockchain has already justified itself.

Your angry comment is a sadly typical reaction of a cult member having their beliefs challenged.

Relax, sir/Ma’am. The person above you isn’t playing a victim or anything of the sort.

How about you provide data to prove him wrong instead of just saying he’s perpetuating a false narrative ?

What big use cases do we have that are life changing for people?

This reply is the sort of thing you get when asking legitimate questions about crypto. Defensive, abusive responses to legitimate questions.

Even the response here is amazing: it is “I know all about cryotocurrencies, you don’t know anything! How dare you ask impertinent questions!”

Next thing you know, many of the same people want to know why you aren’t investing in cryotocurrencies.

> ETH is still a legitimate technology with real use cases.

what would be an example of a real use-case that ETH does well? The core promise of ETH is smart contracts and that code is somehow "law". But that got exposed for the idiotic reasoning that it was and went out of the window when they had to hard-fork in 2017.

No matter what they did since then to improve the old pre-2017 ETH nobody can tell me that bugs don't happen and if they do on this scale then human intervention in inevitable. This is however contra the promise that everything is decentralized by design and not under control of a single actor. Then there are the countless promises about its potential driven up by Gavin Wood & Vitalik Buterin that in hindsight look just like stalling for more time to ensure further funding rounds.

Woods & Buterin are both scammers that extracted millions from their mark. And they were able to do so because they have the technical background to pull it off and are also slightly smarter than the average mobbed-up shit-coin peddler like Dr. Ruja Ignatova or that Australian Satoshi-cosplaying clown Craig Wright.

ETH maybe hasn't been exposed as a scam yet but it is still an example of "fake it till you make it" at all cost and is in the same territorry as "Theranos", "Inventing Anna" - a series of broken promises, stalling techniques for more funding and lost egos of the founders who think of themselves as too big to fail.

> This is however contra the promise that everything is decentralized by design and not under control of a single actor

This is still decentralized because people need to coordinate to make a change. Decentralisation doesn't mean a system without human deciding what happens. It just means decentralisation of the power between the participants and ability to enter the room without creditionalism.

I pretty much think both are dead, or to be more precise: downscaled.

Netflix has been making bad woke movies for too long. If they had good content at least it would be ok, but they don't.

Most people are back in the office and the competition has caught up, so what is Zoom's justification for existence?

People don't seem to graps the cocept that equity prices are fair market values: the current consensus is that netflix is 80% lower than the high peak. At the height, money was free and i flation low. Now, and in the future, money will be very expensive and inflation high, so why would you hold growth stocks that also don't seem to be producing anything valuable (like netflix bad movie quality).

This is a tough one.

I wouldn't worry that much about employability. If you're honest, hardworking, and love writing software then I don't see any issues there. I'm sure you've solved enough hard interesting problems that'll carry over to other industries. It's all about moving bits anyway. You'll even have a leg up if you have a better than average understanding of security.

You may be holding yourself back because it does take some time to ramp up in a new "vertical" (so to speak). Building new professional connections, etc. So like... maybe in an alternate universe you'd be working your way up the ladder at Apple or Google or whatever. That time invested does pay off and there's an opportunity cost there.

The tough one is the ethical question. Sometimes it's hard to tell if our disillusionment is internal or external. In other words, is it nagging you because you can see why the public is negative towards crypto or is it nagging you because you don't want to alienate yourself from the crowd?

If it helps, I've long held the strong belief that I should wake up in the morning guilt-free about my job. I need to feel excited about coming in to work and tackling the next big problem. I refuse to work for or with jerks. I refuse to work on products that aren't striving to make things better. I refuse to work on exploitative or manipulative products. I refuse to work for unfairly low pay. And all of that positive energy (great product, great people, great mission, good/great pay) make the dark/hard times easier to manage.

In the long run I feel like this philosophy has made me a happier and more successful engineer.

EDIT: Just to give you an idea of how I applied the above philosophy. I once quit a well paying job in the very first month because a senior engineer was an insanely venomous person and no one seemed interested in stopping them. I didn't make a big stink about it, just quietly moved on. The next job I found was amazing and I'm so glad that I did what I did. Yes it was scary.

Employability can take a hit if the company you work for gets hacked or rug pulls, which sucks, as employees are victims in that context also, but I know a dev who finds himself a tad radioactive due to this.

That said, we're in a far smaller market. I've suggested he look for full time remote work for overseas companies instead.

I can only speak for myself, but even though I am very skeptical of DeFi and crypto, I don't look down my nose at people simply because they see it differently. I do look down my nose at people who are deliberately running scams, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that.

I think there's a dark side to most things, and that in the beginning it's not easy to see what it is. For example, I think that social media can be destructive to society and to individual people in a variety of ways that weren't at all obvious to me when I was younger. I don't think it was bad to believe in it, though -- it did, in fact, make the internet useful and accessible to way more people, and that's probably a good thing in the long run, even with all the problems that come with that.

In the worst case, you'd have to tell a future employer, "I went to work in DeFi because I believed in the potential of the underlying technology, but [IT DIDN'T WORK OUT || I DON'T BELIEVE IN IT ANYMORE] and now I'm ready to move on." That sounds pretty reasonable to me?

I work in DeFi development as well and I can feel your pain.

Two things that I have to constantly keep in mind:

1. I have worked in stock markets for years before crypto and felt the same: I have been criticized in a similar fashion by laymen who don't necessarily have the proper understanding of what a stock market is and what value does it bring to the society. And yes, people who lost money were of course the most vocal.

2. Someone recently wrote: "99% of DeFi is scam. The rest is the future of finances". I strongly believe that idea, albeit I'd say the ratio is different.

One of the important things that is going to legitimize DeFi is deeper connection between DeFi protocols and real world use cases. One such example was for me when I fell on hard times and had to borrow on Aave to provide for the family. I had money available for me at a rate much lower than the bank, momentarily and with none of of the typical impossible soul-crunching KYC/AML bs. I recovered and paid back. I was happy. The lender was happy. Aave was happy. Stakers in Aave were happy. Absolute win-win all around. How is that not the future?

Oh, and don't work for scam projects.

I can also ride a car without a seatbelt and ignore the soul crushing speed limits and it'll be way better for me to get places faster. How is that not the future?

Taking an existing process and removing safeguards that were added over time for good reason doesn't make something the future unless you can prevent the original problem in a new better way. If your solution is to just ignore the problem exists, it's hard to call it the future.

Good point.

I can easily argument both for regulations in DeFi and against. I see it strong for both sides and I'm not sure what way is the right way.

PS: Regulation of DeFi is close to impossible, so the question is moot anyway.

> One such example was for me when I fell on hard times and had to borrow on Aave to provide for the family

Can you explain how that worked? Aave loans are overcollateralized, so doesn't that mean you actually had capital available? That seems very different from a regular loan where you don't need liquid collateral since it's tied to your identity / credit score.

Yep, I had some bitcoins to put up as collateral. Didn't want to sell it.

Re: regular loan: see, I live in a country other than the US.

"I have assets but I don't want to sell them" is very different from "I need a loan to provide for my family" - the latter is what banks typically provide, U.S. or not, while the former is just a financial instrument to manage exposure.

You didn't have hard times, BTC is quite liquid, you just wanted to keep the exposure.

I'm wondering if there is anyone working at GAMMA (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon) who also worries about the "constant backlash from the public" and if they feel bad about all the abuses their employers make, or if they just laugh all the way to the bank and get to develop a conscience when their companies face financial trouble.

Nah, who am I kidding? Who cares about the evil stuff done by BigTech? The money is so good it can buy them all the therapy they need.

I don't work for any of these companies, and I wanted to do so in the past, but not anymore. Maybe Microsoft is an exception, and that's open to change. I personally do care about the "evil" stuff they do, especially when it comes to privacy and monopolistic practices, but I would never attack or shame anyone for working their, everyone makes their own choice.

The "evil" things done by Big Tech are possible because of the people working there.

No matter how "well-intentioned" they are, if their cushy jobs with high compensation salaries are only possible because of the lucrative "evil" things done by the company, they deserve as much scorn as their bosses.

If bitcoin does crash and burn a lot of money with it, and is seen as the industry of scams and empty promises, then you may be tainted, sure.

Look for other jobs. It can’t hurt. And keep your skills and any side projects diverse too. Should you need to get out of the industry you can point at those unrelated projects and skills.

If your skillset is in demand then other companies should jump at you regardless. If you’ve done nothing but focus on Etherum and Solidarity for the last few years then I guess you’ll suffer.

I work for crypto industry too.

Welcome people's ideas, but pass them through your filter and do what you feel is right, not what people think.

If you believe crypto is good and love working for it, keep on.

If you don't believe so, and have a good alternative to switch, do it.

Just don't make a decision because the people around you tell you so.

Not only about crypto but pretty much applies everything in life.

Don’t worry about what the public thinks. Does your work align with your values? Do you feel it’s ethical and doesn’t take advantage of people?

The public morality once thought it was unethical to help humans escape slavery. It is not a good barometer, especially when the tide against crypto has turned strictly because it stopped making speculators and scammers cash.

In my social circles, there has been intense negative sentiment against crypto consistently since 2016. Is there really a “turning tide”?

It depends on the society. In my social circles, literally every single person around me praised crypto almost religiously, for years.

Well, given that quite a few people lot quite a lot of value with crypto in the past 6 months, I’d say that’s a turning tide.

I recently was in the same position. Went from curious to skeptical to disgusted by the whole crypto/web3 space.

The turning point was seeing my name on the company website, I was embarrassed for myself. Was an easy decision to quit.

When you left did you ask to have your name removed?

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

I would say that there must be a wide range of possible activities in the crypto space. From well- to ill-intended. From crypto altruism over scientific crypto research to creating new crypto ponzi schemes on a weekly basis. Working on crypto does not automatically turn you into a scammer, but working on scams does.

> However, the constant backlash from the public is nagging me.

There isn't a constant backlash from the public - most people don't care, the ones that like it buy and the ones that don't write grumpy blog posts about it. The people who do care have split into the aye and nay camps and are arguing the situation out. The usual anti-capitalist types will hate it, but they hate everything financial.

Although any specific crypto is probably a mad idea that will eventually go bust, it is pretty clear at this point that the industry as a whole is here to stay. It has been more than a decade now, it is hard to come up with a scenario where all the money goes away.

Eventually the "industry" will burn through the available pool of gullible "investors" who can be suckered into giving up their money. New suckers are born every minute, of course, but they won't be enough to keep the crypto industry above the background noise of regular frauds and scams.

Let me interject with a related issue I've seen in HN and its "Who's hiring" posts. I'm tired of having to waddle through the crypto/blockchain/web3 offers that are seemingly and permanently 6 months away from solving most of humanities issues. Most of them are grifters and they should not be rewarded with visibility in this forum.

It's an open hiring board. Who is going to fairly judge the openings without falling into some sort of bias?

Actually I can barely find any crypto posts on the hiring threads. Maybe 5%.

Here is another angle to look at this ... if you have the stomach or appetite for risk. Stay there and document as much as possible from whatever angle that you can. Immerse yourself in literature about similar failed projects and scams (there are so many now from podcasts to books). Cover the problem domain from as many angles as you can (not just technology but ethics and who gets conned in society, the social dynamics around pump & dump). Write down and corroborate your findings with facts and pay _especially_ attention to time/dates (and who else knew about it).

What you should do will become visible by itself very soon. It'll be crystal clear what is the right thing to do. Contact a journalist? contact the feds? create an anonymous podcast? or talk to somebody who will air your story? write a book? all of the above?

It can be highly stressful and it might take another 2-3 years to gather all the evidence. But I can promise you that the characters in this game are most likely very shady, and if they haven't already broken some laws or crossed some ethical boundaries they will do so in the future.

I’m not in your position but can understand your concern. At the end of the day there is an enormous shortage of developers with good skills, and if you’ve spend your cruft in understanding the systems and all the insights that come with it, than they’d be rather easily transferred into others. Not knowing in what part of the system you’re involved, but given the presence on this forum I can only imagine you’re involved from a technical pov.

Back end engineers and data engineers are very much sought after and the distributed nature of tokens in general give raise to a large set of interesting problems, that in my opinion are some times better solved without involvement of the blockchain. But a lot of other concepts do still hold.

Seniority and being a good team member are also invaluable and hard to find, and something that doesn’t matter what technical skill you’re involved with.

So in short I wouldn’t think to much on the fact that you spend time in crypto, but rather spend the time thinking on what concepts and systems are transferrable to other domains and roles and have it be reflected in your resume and cv accordingly. Being a good team member is much more than technicals. You’re a human in a team with insights and knowledge.

For me, cryptocurrencies are comparable to a (for now) unregulated variant of the gambling industry. It’s probably a net negative for society but there’s still lots of supply and demand.

Speaking of net negative, enough people work for Big Tobacco, mass-market alcohol producers, fast-food giants, in pharmacological animal testing, for investment firms, loan lenders and weapon manufacturers. Arguments can be made for and against any part of these areas. They have benefits and drawbacks.

I believe you’ll have to make a value judgement for yourself, whether you’re fine with working on the supply side of things. Some people are, some are not.

It's no worse than sports, pokie or video game gambling and those are "accepted" in society.

The public has been casting lots forever[0]. Some people want to put their fate/outcome in some random system like dice, stocks or crypto. Those systems aren't truly random, but from the perspective of the participants it's close enough.

There is a theological topic on Cleromancy[1], the attempt to perceive gods will by casting lots (rolling dice or whatever) and interpreting the outcome as divine will. Many people do amazingly dangerous things like banging their mortgage into a crypto stock and rationalize the outcome for the winner as being "lucky" or the "universe" made it happen. These overlap with faith based patterns we've seen before.

Casinos and all that rig the odds so that the system of providing "random" outcomes can last forever as a corporation. But the human desire lasts forever, to put their fate in the hands of an external uncontrollable source. Crypto is just another method of casting lots for some members of the public.

Crypto is riding this wave of Roaring Twenties style excess we're living through at the moment. Get out by the end of the 2020s and you'll do okay.

[0]https://earlychurchhistory.org/beliefs-2/casting-lots-in-the...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy

> I am also worried about future employability. If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

It will make things harder, but the places you really want to work will recognize the truly difficult technical problems you are solving and look past the industry.

I worked with a couple of guys who used to work in porn -- some of the best engineers I ever worked with. It took a while for them to find a place that would move them past the recruiting screens, but once they did they ended up with great jobs that recognized their talent.

I work in the crypto industry also. I've thought about leaving because (especially as market sentiments turn so negative), I feel like it could become a stain on my resume that hurts my employability if crypto becomes irrelevant in the future.

At the same time, it may become more relevant in the future (I'm thinking along the lines of 3-10 years out, probably not any time too soon with current market conditions). In that case, my skills may be incredibly valuable.

Until recently I've mainly been doing React+node+Typescript dev and system administration+AWS management anyway, all of which are skills that translate well to any other domain. Recently I've been doing some web3 stuff (which is completely new to me), so that's an area where I especially worry the skills I'm developing could become irrelevant.

But I don't think/hope they will. Even if they do, I have all the other skills to "fall back on" and as with any niche skill you develop, you have to consider its future value. For web3 development, I think if it has any value in the future, it will have a lot of value, so I'm happy with this time investment.

As for other considerations, I really like the company and people I work with. We provide financial services to other crypto companies (so we're essentially B2B). There is a ton of toxicity in the crypto industry unfortunately (Coinbase and Kraken are two prominent examples) so that's my biggest gripe with publicly identifying with "crypto values" (I'm pretty far from libertarian anyway). So my main concern really is people forming an opinion about how my values might align with their company values due to my work history.

But that could be said for working for any FAANG also (since they're all largely amoral, capitalistic, profit-drive companies)

As long as you aren't running a scam you have nothing to worry about. Most people don't care about crypto one way or the other, all the noise comes from a small group of boosters and haters.

Don’t worry about future employability, surely some people won’t hire ex-crypto guys. But no more than people won’t hire ex-amazon or ex-whatever.

Just make sure your company isn‘t scammy.

It looks like higher interest rates is going to burst a lot of bubbles. So maybe the industry will go back to its non-speculative roots soon.

That said, the environmental aspect is an issue that will linger.

Most of them here work in someway related to adtech and social media that is polarising communities across world, enabling fake news and allowing governments to snoop into private lives. But no one seems to care. At the end of day its just a job. Your objective must be to maximize your $/hr.

Not in the same position as you currently, but in a previous life I did work for a company which was pursuing NFTs. That bothered me but it wasn't the entirety of the business as they were also working on projects which I could see having some intrinsic value. That's what crypto businesses will have to demonstrate if they're going to survive the current turmoil and you could view that as an opportunity.

At the very least you're not working for Meta.

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

There will be companies that will refuse to hire you if you've been working in an industry they considered to be scammy. But those compares are a few and far between.

Also know that there are (silent?) supporters out there, not just haters.

>All the hate for crypto, even though much of it is uninformed, makes me question my decisions. I am also worried about future employability.

People keep working for Facebook and Google. And they tend to get other jobs when they want. So I wouldn't worry there.

I guess get tougher & disregard what people think or find a new job.

If you genuinely see potential in the technology and ideology, I say stick to your convictions and remember that many opinions that appear to be widespread are just loud minorities. A lot of HN's anti-crypto stance is just an emotional reaction to the "crypto bros" phenomenon[0]. I also don't think employability will be an issue in the future, especially if you were not part of a scammy project.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857

I’m curious that do individual devs of these crypto protocols really earn a lot like what many would have thought about them? By a lot, I mean like at least a million dollars a year that range of income. I mean, as we all know, in many of these protocols, not saying that your protocol is one of those though, the devs have almost full control over the protocol’s operations. It’s not really that “decentralised” as many thought of them.

I’m curious because many of these protocols, such as dex/farms or maybe tomb forks etc, claim they earn pretty well either through fees or what not from participants, and their tokenomics often have a good portion going to devs.

Also, if defi protocol devs really do make that kind of money and I was one of them, I wouldn’t be too worried about employability because I know I could easily retire within a few years! But that’s just me though.

I work for a crypto company although I truly believe we are solving something here instead of bullshit which is 98% of the industry.

Sadly, investors aren't pouring money they are in tokens of goddesses.

If you think all your company is doing is scam, then by all means leave. Otherwise, stay if you want to.

I have not found many people who think what we are building is a scam once I explained and demoed.

I think you’re in the best possibile position, actually. You’re still learning valuable generic skills about the technology, you’re not just doing crypto, so I wouldn’t worry about your employability. Regarding the backlash, do you derive this feeling you have from Twitter? Because in that case I would just suggest to ignore everyone who’s either super invested in crypto and the absolutist critics: both sides are just good at polluting the discussion with either toxic positivity or superficial criticism. A good idea could also be to avoid Twitter altogether: it’s the most toxic social network I can think of, and it’s very good at convincing everyone that opinions there actually matter something in society.

I also work in this area. More in a trading context but still crypto only. I do not think that your current choice of employment will have any negative impact on your future. I would even argue that it would be rather positive. Not everybody is open for new ideas. Working on a Defi protocol shows your commitment to learning new stuff. I would still suggest you should switch your job, since you said it yourself, your are not really into it. IT will get difficult for you to defend yourself since you do not believe in the tech.

You can always look at the opposite side (working in the regulatory/analytical side that does KYC/AML)

IMHO crypto space is good because the banking sector finally sees they have some competition. And crypto space is global, not tied to country banking sector lobbying (pardon, regulation :P). So, for example, in my country (and I believe many others as well), we have many banks. Still, you can't see competition between them - they usually charge the same/similar fees and give you a similar package. None of them will provide you with some specific derivatives (e.g., currency rate hedging) unless you are a multi-million player, etc.

Is there a scam in the crypto market? Sure, just like it was rampant in the Forex market many years ago. But, you still can find fair players and need to know where to look for them.

PS: I believe this backslash mostly comes from people competing against the crypto market in some way. I could see on Twitter that the loudest are those who are heavily invested in (or will try to sell you at some point) gold, oil, stock market, etc.

The fair players like Celsius or maybe Terra Luna? I am almost genuine in this question because those two might probably have been in your "fair crypto" list a few months ago. Crypto practically incentivses scams. Why create something honest when you can rip off thousands of idiots and they will defend you for doing so?

Crypto offers almost none of the services that normal banks offer. Crypto loans are overcollateralized meaning you need to have $4 in your account to borrow $1. Banks don't feel threatened by crypto, they just see a new class of idiots to exploit.

I don't find your examples convincing. Like in banking and finance, everyone is fair until they are proven to be not. For example, Knight Capital, Bernie Madoff, SAC, The Galleon Group, or banks like Merrill, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Deutsche, not to mention banks that went bust in recent years [1]... and yet, no one suggests that finance and banking world are scams.

As I mentioned, you need to know where to look, do your own research, and read numbers. Just like the above examples, they had some pretty unrealistic traces before they went down, but people wanted to believe otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_failures_in_the_U...

In most of your examples the customers were not harmed and in some of them even the investors were made whole. A lot of people faced criminal investigation for their actions.

This is what I mean when I say scams are incentivised. When a project you hold gets rugpulled, you have two choices: either hunt down the people who scammed you and get your money back (unlikely), OR shill your coin to as many people you can with the hope that some other greater fool will agree to hold your bags. Most crypto communities chose option B. Some even go as far as to defend the rugpullers so as to restore some legitimacy to the coin. The celcius people are a good example of this, but any bsc shitcoin will have the same process.

I think despite what the sentiment is, there is real value in crypto/blockchain. I mean if the US Government turned the dollar into a digital currency, wouldn't the sentiment change? Wouldn't DeFi be better with regulation? All the benefits of cryptocurrency/smart contracts/DeFi are real. The problem is there is no regulation. Without regulations most people are going to optimize for self interest. That is really overshadowing the potential. It will eventually change for the better.

How is it Decentralized Finance when regulation is created by a central body? (Can’t have multiple orgs defining regulations, they’ll just come up with different rules!).

DAOs are actually centralized bodies… “pay up and join the rule making club”.

The benefits touted would be amazing, but implementation-wise, are not based in reality and doesn’t account for use cases in a non-closed system.

It’s not sentiment; study Byzantine generals problem, CAP/PACLEC theorem, and hashing. Realize that the coin cannot be removed from the chain and vice versa to have those distributed benefits. Then look at the trade-offs from things like power consumption, etc. it’s not worth it. Maybe when we’re fully green and everyone has way more electrify than they can consume.

>Wouldn't DeFi be better with regulation?

Doesn't the "de" in DeFi imply the lack of a regulating body?

kind of, but also not really, or at least not the same amount or type of regulation.

DeFi is like many new things, it is it’s own new category (a car is not just a fast horse or the internet was not just a better fax machine).

For example: in DeFi you can hold your own money (not just an IOU, but the real private keys). So it would make sense that things should be regulated differently, as often there is no custodial risk. So this set of regulation probably should be applied differently. Just an example. Other regualtion might make sense (depending of you ask), but the question arises what to do if they are not enforcable (just regulate with illegal spying tools, or let do and warn the public and maybe even stop thinking the state should protect everybody… these are only questions, I do not imply/recommend anything with these questions)

Regulation, the one thing crypto was meant to avoid.

Maybe this will help change your mind or at least give you a better alternative within the field: http://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/

But if it doesn't change your mind and you don't believe in this industry you should find another job, somewhere which aligns with your values. I don't believe nutral is good enough.

IMHO: As someone who thinks blockchains are cool but cryptobros aren't... ideological purity is for extremists and monks. Very few people in the world work for some "perfect" good; we all make tradeoffs moment-to-moment, day-to-day, year-to-year.

Whether you work in crypto or, say, defense or oil or animal testing or AI or finance or just plain ol' Big Tech, your labor output will contribute value to somebody in society (that's why they're paying you), while probably also hurting someone else in society in some small way (luring clueless investors, causing pollution, killing foreigners, exacerbating social conflicts, outcompeting small businesses... whatever). None of us are pure good or evil, and the majority of us live paycheck to paycheck under some corrupt government controlled by ruthless elites, no matter what particular -ism they call it. Your part is unlikely to be more than a cog in somebody else's big, unforgiving wheel.

You choose your battles, do what you can, give back when you can, and try not to cause unnecessary harm, while also taking care of yourself and the people, beings, places, and values you care about. That's already asking a lot of a species barely differentiated from chimps and suddenly given the power of electricity and machines.

As a developer (or some other techie), you have a pretty rare opportunity (in terms of human history, and even most other professions in today's world) of being able to float between verticals with relative ease. Most people can't switch careers without going back to school or going through years of training, but those of us in tech, we can keep mostly our same jobs and skills no matter which industry we choose work in.

So, whatever... self-reflection is a beautiful thing, and the whole point of it is to figure out where you stand relative to your values. Just like you wouldn't blindly follow speculative bubbles, you also don't need to let random online naysayers get to you. They don't get to judge you without knowing your story and situation, and the personal tradeoffs you've had to make in your life.

Consider yourself lucky that you're in a position where you're able to choose. If you decide to stay in crypto a bit longer to see if the technology (and ideology) matures, you can do whatever's in your power to make it less speculative. Write articles as an industry insider to educate people on the differences between exploitative speculation and peer-to-peer decentralized trust networks. Come up with democratic, open-source solutions to distribute the power among individuals, instead of replacing governments with unregulated centralized exchanges that hoard all the tokens, capital, etc. Don't let crypto become the next Wall Street, minus regulation -- and by that mean I mean big investors pooling individual savings and playing dumb games with them for personal gain. Do whatever the opposite of "privatize profits, socialize costs" would be in the crypto world (if such a thing were possible).

Crypto as a speculative financial tool might fail, but crypto the technology is here to stay, just one more chapter in our long book of accumulated human learnings, both good and bad.

If you eventually decide crypto isn't right for you, and you can afford to do so, take a few months off to evaluate your life and your options. Your values don't have to be a static thing, and neither do your passions. Explore both a bit before choosing your next path, and if you can settle on a profession or industry that would make you feel better... great, go for it! You can always reevaluate it again in a few years' time.

Tell your next employer why you entered crypto in the first place and why you left it. Honestly, they probably won't care... unless you switch to the nonprofit space, most employers' primary value is just profit, no matter what the feel-good whitewashing says on their website. And in the event they happen to ask, you'll be able to answer because you've done the self-reflection to be able to answer meaningfully, and you can tell them why you decided to take your skills elsewhere, that it wasn't a light decision, etc., etc.

It's OK to feel lost -- it's not a bad thing, it's an opportunity! Taking risks and learning from them is how we grow as people, right? And learning how to balance your needs against others' is how we strengthen communities, financial or online or otherwise.

Best of luck and enjoy the ride :)

If you're worried, just look for a better job you'll also like. No reason you need to stick around in crypto. You can invest in it in other ways than your day job if you really believe in it.

The crypto dent is on your resume now.

At this point, you may as well stick around and make a dent in the crypto world.

Find a way to have an impact. Write blog posts. Get a serious project delivery under your belt.

As to what you (or other people) think about your resume: don't be so hard on yourself. You made this choice for a decent reason. Follow your intuition and try to have fun / have an impact somewhere.

Not sure this is the best advice, although it’s clearly well intentioned.

If op doesn’t believe in what they’re doing, and knows it’s not for them, throwing more of your energy and time into it could just be a waste.

(This is true of any career. More time invested means better prospects means harder to start over because you’d be starting over without experience for likely less pay. Breaking that cycle will get harder the longer you wait.)

To quote a great man:

“No amount of money ever bought a second of time.” - Howard Stark, (creator of Web 4.0 and inventor of Recentralised Finance).

That's a good point. Reading my comment in the hindsight, I agree with you that it might be misunderstood.

My point was _assuming_ that the OP believed in what they are doing right now.

If not, that's a very different story.

I wouldn’t worry about becoming unemployable, while I deem crypto a predatory business, you haven’t worked for the Gestapo and I wouldn’t hold it against you. But, given the whole thing may collapse anytime, I’d sharpen my interview skills so that I can jump ship if anything bad happens.

It rather sounds like you might want to change your job in crypto. E.g. go working for an infrastructure protocol if you believe in the tech.

As for the rest. Don't worry about future employability and there is as much shady stuff going on in tradfi as in crypto.

If you worked for Amazon, Facebook, Google, or a similar social media / adtech company, I think you’d be doing more real damage to society. The only difference is that these organizations have a better PR department.

Crypto has pluses and minuses and you should determine whether it’s a technology you believe in or not. I think basing your opinion of it on “the public” or (notoriously uninformed about crypto) HN opinion is just a bit mentally weak. Either believe in what you’re doing, or do something else. But don’t base your feelings on what the mob thinks.

Check out NKN coin and new kind of network inspired by Wolfram cellular automata. The protocol is truly P2P and could change things to a workable state. Kudos for your skepticism. The world really needs a crypto to work to achieve freedom but current incarnations are nothing but scams.

> will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

People that worked at Enron, Lehman, LTCM, et al all got new jobs quite easily. You'll be fine.

> the constant backlash from the public is nagging me

The public is mostly angry that they paid too much. They were speculative gamblers that bought into the bubble extremely late. This is no different than people who aggressively took loans to play landlord at the height of the housing bubble. I can empathize with people that buy idiotic scam tokens as well as people that end up holding a ton of debt as their houses get foreclosed but at the end of the day they, not you, are responsible for their poor decision making. Do you really think it is your fault that people out there mortgaged their house to do 100x leveraged longs on dog themed coins?

If the wheel of fortune had gone their way instead of those shorting them, they wouldn't show any sympathy for the shorts.

> People that worked at Enron, Lehman, LTCM, et al all got new jobs quite easily. You'll be fine.

A lot of them probably struggled quite a bit to recover.

Also, you don't know which opportunities you don't have access to anymore. People won't tell you: "I don't want to work with you because you worked for an obnoxious ad tech company", but quite a few people will think this very hard in their head.

Don't underestimate the ethical questions in your career choices.

> A lot of them probably struggled quite a bit to recover.

The ones that were a party to fraud or extreme folly, sure, but competent people generally had the same difficulty finding a new position as anyone else after their company goes under. I knew people at Enron and Lehman that had new jobs within days and weeks of the blowup. It isn't a big deal and no reasonable person is going to hold normal employees responsible for the blowups of executives or tides of the market. Especially when useful developers are in extreme demand.

> but quite a few people will think this very hard in their head.

Not having to work with people who think this about potential colleagues is a blessing in itself.

Nobody should ever feel guilty for other people's crimes, but more importantly - what is a crypto rug compared to the founding of a bank?

Crypto can't fail, the question is just what kind of crypto there will be, will there be a centralized corpo/state dystopia paired with surveillance or can we recreate everything in a robust, decentralized and anonymous way to bring forth an unprecenentend social mobility for all?

> I also see true potential in the technology and ideology

A good reason to continue on your path.

Also crypto isn't going anywhere, in fact its about to be adopted by the FED with a CBDC, FedCoin. The price is down today, but the price isn't what is important about the technology

CBDCs have nothing to do with crypto. Even if they did, it would clearly be a replacement and not an addition

I 100% disagree. Crypto is essentially a fad like beanie babies.

Apparently yes. But also apparently he can't comprehend what he reads.

Just keep building, bear market are the best time to bake in experience points that make you the most highly compensatable in bull markets

There are people around you that kept building in the last 3 year crypto bear market

There are no insights that appeared since then that werent the same then

"whyamibad2" -- username checks out /jk

seriously tho, you can focus on your skills and carefully re-label them such that your future job prospects aren't affected. crypto became a scam because that was the only way to kill crypto and the Bitcoin's movement. the technology will probably be around in new forms sometime next decade, but the stigma will make it hard to find jobs until then.

I have dedicated the majority of my professional career to crypto. I am deeply passionate about the industry and its potential to disrupt the global financial system, and IMO it has already in significant and profound ways. Whether you agree or not, it has certainly brought the discussion of fiat currencies, central banks, and the philosophy of monetary systems from the backwater of forgotten academics to a real debate in the public sphere.

I work in this industry because it combined my libertarian beliefs with my software skillset. I work with a lot of like-minded people, and the atmosphere is very freedom-oriented and open to debate compared to the average tech company.

The 2018-2020 bear market was a true test of die hard crypto employees. Bitcoin went to $3k as the tech industry boomed. So many talented people capitulated and went to FAANG pa$ture$ but those of us who stuck it out also got paid.

I can’t really give you advice other than, if the industry and / or company disagrees with your moral beliefs, you should find another line of work. Similarly I don’t work in adtech or social media because I find it distasteful. You can’t earn a paycheck that makes up for a dissonance in your sense of self.

I agree there are more scams than most in crypto, but I don’t work for scams. I greatly enjoy the technology and the freedom it enables. YMMV

What we are seeing is the cryptocurrency market reinventing all the mechanisms the "traditional" banking industry has been using for decades. There is no disruption when the whole thing is doing exactly the same just unregulated combined with extremely high risk.

Cryptocurrencies will always have the problem of interacting with the real world, where people are not bound by smart contracts and do not behave "rationally". Not everything is codifyable, especially not people.

> The 2018-2020 bear market was a true test of die hard crypto employees. Bitcoin went to $3k as the tech industry boomed. So many talented people capitulated and went to FAANG pa$ture$ but those of us who stuck it out also got paid.

Only if they sold and this money came from other people who put it into this negative sum game. Remember that the true winners of it all are the electricity providers that are delivering the power to drive mining all those proof of work coins. The losers are the people who put in their money last and are left holding the bags.

To a libertarian, disconnecting money from the government is a major goal. Traditional banking does not achieve this. I believe you do not understand the libertarian viewpoint.

Take it from someone who has worked in economics and finance. Cryptocurrencies and tokens are mostly considered speculative assets or derivatives with a nifty digital signature. It will not "disrupt" the industry, it will make it a bit more diversified -- possibly.

Talks of ideology aside, the conversation on fiat, central banking, etc. in the public consciousness predates the rise of crypto by a lot. If we can call it "public consciousness."

The idea of crypto as a game changer has long sinked in the harbor. What has sailed is that it is a new notch in the portfolio belt of institutional investors and banks. A cursory glance at who invests or has invested in cryto companies is telling.

You are very confused. Crypto is essentially a fad like beanie babies.

When you have nothing to contribute, say nothing.

Just ignore him. A loser copy-pasting the same useless comment under every comment.

Probably a no lifer, just ignore.

Some people can't even differentiate between the technology itself and their implementations.

And you sound like a robot, giving the same canned response to others' comments.

I suspect, your definition "crypto" is not the same as the definition of OP.

Can you elaborate more, why do you think it's a fad?

Have you tried to write, deploy or at least use any Ethereum contacts? Do you know how Merkle trees work or at least what are they useful for? How about elliptic curves?

I worked on this off-chain technology a few years ago: https://github.com/enumatech/sprites/tree/master/examples/pa...

On the black stain on the CV: the best time to quit cryptocurrency companies is before you start. The second best time is today.

It's just a year or so. Two years will look worse. Three years and you'll start looking like a fraudster.

Never too late to minimize the damage.

Amusing to watch hackernews wake up and smell the pancakes they've been setting on fire these last two years.

It's like allowing / disallowing casino gambling.

"people like it!"

"it's verifyibly awful for you!"

"but it's fuuuuuun."

"it's ruining the planet."

"Don't be an asshole! Apes!"

"aaaaand we didn't make it"