All revolutions eventually become establishments. What began as cryptocurrency’s peer-to-peer challenge to the global financial order is rapidly being absorbed by traditional forces, trading its anti-elite soul for spot ETF legitimacy, institutional custody, and the same banking framework it was built to bypass.
This is a familiar arc. Throughout history, every revolution began with a promise to overthrow old power structures and dismantle the status quo. Once in power, priorities shift to stability and preservation, turning ideals into systems. Inevitably, movements reach the edge of rebellion and, to survive, must court what they once eschewed: venture capital, institutional trust, and regulatory forbearance. This requires conformity and triggers a process of assimilation. What began as a revolution hardens into orthodoxy as the original emancipatory goals are diluted or abandoned. In the words of American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
In a 1999 interview, the late great David Bowie explained this process and said that if he had started over, he probably wouldn’t have gone into music. He would have worked on the Internet instead. He argued that the Internet is destructive, chaotic, and nihilistic. It felt like a force for revolution. It made you feel like you could make a difference. Rock and roll, by contrast, was losing its power. Once a disruptor who shocked people with their sound, style and symbolism, they eventually found mainstream acceptance. He described rock and roll as a “currency” that, while certainly still conveying information, no longer conveyed rebellion.
Looking back at Bowie’s memories reminds me of how I felt when I became interested in cryptocurrencies in 2016, the year he passed away. At the time, while cryptocurrencies had the energy of the Internet’s old insurgents, the Internet itself (controlled by the FAANG giants of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) had become its master, trading its anarchic, decentralized beginnings for a centralized corporate order.
For those of us in the crypto industry, it was a time of idealism and loose rules, populated by outsiders and activists, libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, and widely caricatured as dangerous delinquents rising from the depths of the dark web. The association with cryptocurrencies felt like a kind of counterargument in itself.
Inspired by the cypherpunks who came before us, we advocated for a decentralized internet that protects individual privacy from government and corporate surveillance. Because of the sovereign money that was not exploited by the same attackers that destroyed the system in 2008. And for a digital future where information and transactions cannot be stopped. We truly believed that we could stand up for those long excluded by the traditional financial system and rebuild power at the protocol layer. We really felt like we could make a difference.
I mourned those early days, remembering the frequent gatherings I held over cold pizza and hot beer, where evangelical workshops on self-control were held and the halls were ablaze with laser eyes. These days, the pride we once took in our responsibility to be your own bank has been replaced by the convenience of ETFs. Now you can get “exposure” without having to learn what a seed phrase is. Conversations have moved from the fringes to boardrooms inside banks and government buildings, and are being held by designated people by default with titles such as digital asset risk managers and blockchain policy advisors. But this was always the goal, right?
The goal of mass adoption was both a moral validation of our insane mission and an indicator of growth. Mass adoption will prove us right. Back in 2016, we thought “mass adoption” would mean moms using their phone’s hot wallet to buy a latte every day at the local cafe. In 2026, TP ICAP (a wholesale broker that processes $200 trillion worth of annual commodity transactions for banks and hedge funds) will decide to distribute even 1% of its trading volume to the cryptocurrency market. Flows of this scale will trivialize visions of retail autonomy and public service.
Just as rock and roll eventually smoothly transitioned into a multi-billion dollar corporate industry and the once decentralized internet became a landscape dominated by a few platforms, the dream of mass adoption of cryptocurrencies is also becoming a reality. As stated in the title of a16z’s annual Cryptocurrency State Report, 2025 was the year when cryptocurrencies became mainstream. We have succeeded in creating something worth protecting, but protection is inherently conservative. I did it. Cryptography is the new order.
What was unthinkable in 2016 is now a reality. At this year’s Davos, cryptocurrencies leapt from the semi-illegal sideline events they hosted on their own just a few years ago to center stage in the main arena. Heads of state are publicly competing to claim that cryptocurrencies are a national priority, while CEOs of the world’s largest banks are speaking of cryptocurrencies as an existential threat.
The JPMorgans, BlackRocks, and Morgan Stanleys of the world are all singing the same song, promoting cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular, as a legitimate, regulated asset class with the same institutional seriousness as gold and stocks. Listed companies are piling up crypto assets on their balance sheets.
Stablecoins record annual transaction volumes that exceed those of major payment networks. Tokenized real-world assets are moving from crypto-native experimentation into the core plumbing of markets, from funds and treasuries to payments and collateral, while DeFi is becoming increasingly legible for traditional asset managers, corporate treasuries and family offices that have been waiting for regulatory clarity and operational maturity. The US GENIUS Act and Europe’s MiCA have turned regulatory gray areas into black and white, with less and less room for violations.
Purists will argue that the real purpose is to create a parallel economic reality, and that cryptocurrencies are simply bolted onto existing systems. Still, this movement introduced a primitive element that changed TradFi forever.
Programmable value has transferred trust from institutions to code. Instant payments ended the days of multi-day clearing and brought money into a 24/7 world. Composability turns siled financial products into interoperable building blocks, breaks down walled gardens and restores user choice. Self-custody allows individuals, for the first time, direct sovereign control over their assets. Smart contracts have replaced intermediaries with transparent and automated rules of engagement. New asset classes have expanded the investable space and lowered the barriers to investment. Stablecoins have democratized cross-border payments, making them fast, cheap, and global. DeFi has proven that lending, trading, derivatives, and even insurance can fully function without traditional gatekeepers.
Cryptocurrencies may not replace the traditional financial system, but they have fundamentally rewritten its underlying logic, making its impact irrefutable and immutable. By challenging long-held monopolies and forcing existing companies to innovate or survive, they have effectively forced the hand of the ruling class. Institutions can adopt, regulate, and include these primitives, but they cannot cancel the invention.
Will cryptocurrencies remain weird at all?History says most of them will become normalized. Codes can express rebellion, but they are no longer rebellion.
This leaves changemakers looking for the next frontier. This change can also be seen in the symbols where cryptocurrencies were once concentrated. The Laser Eyes meme was born as a provocation, a rallying cry for the belief that Bitcoin would reach $100,000, but at the time its optimism was despicable. Now that number has gone, the meme itself has been worn by presidents and stripped of its underground elements.
Cryptocurrency is no longer shocking to everyone. It has evolved from counterculture to norm, proving that rebellion always migrates to the newest and least understood media.
