The Crypto Years: A Trapped Echo

The Crypto Years: A Trapped Echo

I often look back at the two years I spent in the crypto industry, from December 2022 to December 2024. Those months feel like a distinct, difficult chapter in my engineering journey.

In the beginning, it was quiet, perhaps too quiet. It was the crypto winter, full of stagnation and uncertainty. As a senior engineer, I spent countless nights trying to build meaningful architecture, yet often felt I was just running in circles, trying to find an exit that didn't exist. There was no way out in the work itself, only the relentless pursuit of hype over substance.

But the true burden came towards the end. As the market showed signs of life again in 2024, the environment didn't improve; it became suffocatingly toxic. Greed, arrogance, and a complete lack of humility filled the spaces where innovation should have been. The "ego" I wrote about in a previous post was everywhere, amplified by the volatility of the market.

Working in that space felt misaligned with my fundamental values of simplicity and peace. It took a while to decompress after I left, to reclaim my own rhythm. Engineering is a service, but some architectures are built to trap you, not to set you free.