@cuppytubby

This resonated with me deeply. I agree with the core diagnosis but I also want to expand on a distinction around community that I don't think gets named enough. Crypto's recent failures are often framed as a failure of “social” - i.e. creator coins, celebrity tokens, influencer-led launches that churn users and erode trust, which I agree. When attention is turned into assets before trust is established, the focus shifts to launches and exits, not belief or retention. I think some nuance gets lost when community is treated as the same thing as influencer-driven hype. What failed wasn't community - it was monetizing borrowed audiences before earning trust. “Social” is visibility, reach, and distribution. Community is something else entirely: shared values, shared behaviour, and a shared time horizon. Most crypto social experiments were never communities at all. They were markets pretending to be cultures. Crypto isn't just tech, it's a coordination system. And coordination requires social legitimacy, not just utility. Bitcoin is the obvious example. It didn't win because of apps or UX. It won because a native, grassroots community formed around a shared narrative, shared values, and enforced long-term alignment before anything worked. Belief came first. Infrastructure followed, apps came later. It emerged from within the community and held together long before it worked. This is the real role community plays in crypto: it gives people a reason to trust and participate, not a shortcut to growth. Apps scale utility. Markets price risk. Communities decide what behaviour is acceptable. Without that social legitimacy, systems drift toward extraction. Tokens become tools for exit rather than participation. Infrastructure can work perfectly yet still, nothing lasts. Having built communities and worked with them on a grassroots level, the pattern is consistent: projects that import attention die fast, while those with organic communities that grow from within survive longer. Pulling people into speculative systems they don’t understand isn't adoption - it's reputational damage that shows up later. It teaches people that crypto is something done TO them, not something they participate in. The order matters: Community → social legitimacy → apps → sustainable models This path is slower and harder to replicate, but it's the pattern that has consistently endured across cycles. Crypto will not be saved by apps alone. It will only survive if communities decide that some things shouldn't be financialized, and that long-term coherence matters more than short-term liquidity. That was true at the beginning. I believe it's still true now.

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