Most of the crypto industry is dead. The rest will become finance. Not a tragedy — just how technology matures.
Most of the Crypto Industry Is Dead — and That's a Good Thing
"Most of the crypto industry is dead and it's never coming back. Eventually, people will realize it." — Anthony Pompliano, Consensus Miami 2026
Two days ago, Anthony Pompliano posted the tweet above and got a storm in return. People called him a fool, said he was wrong, questioned him more than 50 times over the course of the day at the Consensus conference in Miami. But after a full day in the trenches there, he was even more convinced of what he'd said.
This isn't the post of a pessimistic short-seller. Pomp has written and spoken about Bitcoin for nearly a decade and considers himself an optimist, with no "pessimism gene" to short with. But he believes the industry needs a bitter pill — "If we don't acknowledge the truth, we can't improve the future."
Why can't crypto "weed itself out" like other industries?
Every industry has a natural business cycle:
- A technological breakthrough appears
- A wave of companies is founded to exploit it
- A few succeed, most fail
- Failing companies shut down → capital and talent get reallocated
Step 4 matters as much as step 3. Clearing out the losers is exactly what lets the whole industry move forward.
Crypto has no such mechanism. The reason lies in two properties of the technology:
👻 Ghost chains
A blockchain almost never "shuts down." As long as one or two people keep running a node, the network stays alive. This creates the illusion that a blockchain is still "default alive," still in use. In reality, there are thousands of blockchains in a zombie state — still running, but no one cares.
🧟 Zombie coins
Coins have no formal bankruptcy mechanism. As long as a few people still "believe," a coin won't go straight to zero. Instead, the token loses nearly all its value, liquidity evaporates, and holders are stuck with something useless. Sometimes an exchange delists it, but most just stay stuck in obscurity forever.
There are millions of coins on the market. Do you really believe all of them will succeed? Pomp asked the whole Consensus room — not a single hand went up.
Ghost chains and zombie coins alone are enough to prove it: most of the crypto industry is dead, people just don't want to admit it yet.
From Missionary to Mercenary
Crypto was originally built by missionaries — people who believed in the vision so much they were willing to trade their own money to make Bitcoin succeed. The mission mattered more than profit.
Today, missionaries are nearly extinct. In their place are mercenaries — soldiers of fortune who follow wherever the biggest profit is, purely speculative, not needing to stand for any worldview.
You see the consequences of mercenaries everywhere:
- Flash-in-the-pan meme coins
- Rampant scam coins
- Constant market manipulation
- Pump-and-dump yield farming
- Vaporware product launches — launching products to grab attention rather than solve a real problem
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
When mercenaries outnumber missionaries, the industry is run by people who don't understand — and don't believe in — the original vision.
The internal war: "Investing" vs "Hating investing"
A large part of the online community constantly bashes VCs, big financial institutions, and regulation. Pomp calls this mindset not just foolish but suicidal:
- Venture capitalists funded nearly every Bitcoin infrastructure company in the first decade. Without VCs, there's no industry like today's.
- Big financial institutions are pouring in capital — and this is perhaps the single most important signal to watch: see where they put their money.
They are large, sophisticated companies, and they are rapidly taking market share from crypto-native companies. Crypto is dying, and being replaced by the very "heirs" of the old system.
Three examples that show "the narrative has changed"
1. Morgan Stanley enters the Bitcoin retail arena
Morgan Stanley just announced it will launch direct Bitcoin trading on E*TRADE — a platform with 8.6 million customers. Trading fees cheaper than both Coinbase and Charles Schwab.
The infrastructure behind it is Zero Hash — a 7–8-year-old startup now co-owned by Morgan Stanley, SoFi, and Apollo. This is no longer "crypto vs Wall Street" — this is Wall Street directly operating crypto.
The question: what percentage of crypto trading volume will shift to traditional broker channels, ETFs, the NYSE, Nasdaq? No one knows exactly — but it's certainly a lot. That's a massive narrative reversal.
2. Coinbase and Robinhood are melting into each other
At the same time, crypto-native companies are racing to add non-crypto products: stocks, prediction markets, options, commodities — anything that brings new customers, new AUM, new revenue.
Is Robinhood a crypto company or a traditional broker? Is Coinbase a traditional broker or a crypto company?
The question no longer has a clear answer. That's the convergence.
3. Michael Saylor publicly says he "might sell Bitcoin"
On the latest earnings call, Saylor said he might sell Bitcoin in the future to pay a "stretched dividend." He likened the company to a real-estate developer — buy land cheap, sell it dear, use the gains to pay the interest.
"We buy it cheap, we sell it dear. Capital gains fund credit dividends. That is the essence of the business."
A few years ago, a sentence like this would have been blasphemy. Today, Bitcoin still went up after he said it. This is a sign the market has accepted Bitcoin as a normal financial asset — and the "HODL, never sell" community no longer controls the narrative.
Two parallel worlds at Consensus
Pomp describes a stark contrast at the conference:
- On one side, serious entrepreneurs and investors solving real problems — like Mike Cagney at Figure Technologies.
- On the other, a troupe of performers running around with meme coins, pump.fun, and all kinds of nonsense, still clinging to a 2018 dream that will never come true.
Right at the conference entrance there was a giant booth called "The Crypto Carnival."
"We do not need more carnivals. We do not need more nonsense."
Four areas that will survive
Not everything is dead. Pomp believes 4 areas will accrue value and survive to upgrade the old financial system:
| # | Area | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bitcoin | Store of value |
| 2 | Stablecoins | Payments, transfers |
| 3 | Infrastructure | The foundational layer for the rest |
| 4 | Tokenization | Bringing real-world assets onto the blockchain |
These four won't exist independently as a separate "crypto industry" — they will merge into finance.
A lesson from the '90s
In the '90s, people called them "internet companies." Today, we just call them companies.
The same will happen with crypto. The projects with real terminal value, able to survive, will drop the word "crypto" — they'll just be companies and assets. The things that cling to a "crypto-only" identity will be the ones that die.
"At the end of the day, crypto is just going to become finance. It's all going to become one big thing."
Final advice
If you're working or investing in the long tail of crypto — small altcoins, meme coins, projects outside the 4 areas above — Pomp advises being very careful right now.
Think about reallocating your time and money toward areas with a real chance of upgrading the financial system. Because crypto is a free market — the best ideas win. And the best ideas will be absorbed by the old system.
The good talent in the industry is looking outward: AI, space travel, DNA decoding, self-driving cars, defense. There's too much exciting stuff happening. Crypto has to compete to keep its people.
Most of the crypto industry is dead. The rest will become finance. That's not a tragedy — it's how technology matures.
From a video by Anthony Pompliano