Wintermute CEO criticizes the crypto industry for stagnation: The battle for public chains is meaningless, and price increases have replaced the original mission.. Calls for a return to the cypherpunk spirit

Is the crypto industry gradually drifting away from its original ideals? Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy recently spoke candidly, offering a series of sharp reflections on the entire industry—from public chain competition and exchange design to the very spirit of crypto itself.
(Previous context: CZ: AI will make you unemployed, cryptocurrencies will make you no longer need to work)
(Additional background: Wintermute 28-page report: Unveiling the flow of off-chain funds)

Table of Contents

• The competition among public chains is meaningless: no one truly wins
• Stablecoins are just small victories; the fundamental structure remains unchanged
• Perpetual contracts are hard to scale; the real bottleneck lies in the risk engine
• Price overrides ideology; the crypto spirit is gradually deteriorating
• Token economics is “completely broken”; a call to return to first principles
• Market cooling off may not be a bad thing; true believers will stay

Renowned crypto market maker Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy posted a lengthy thread on platform X, sharply criticizing the current state of the crypto industry. He describes himself as a “wishful cynic,” pointing out that most progress in the industry has stagnated and ideals have been corrupted, while still holding a cautiously optimistic outlook for the future. He calls for a return to the original cypherpunk spirit.

short thread of thoughts on where we are etc
— wishful_cynic (@EvgenyGaevoy) February 4, 2026

The competition among public chains is meaningless: no one truly wins

In his post, Evgeny Gaevoy first highlights that the ongoing debates over public chains like Solana and Ethereum are essentially meaningless. He believes that so far, no public chain has truly hosted a major event demonstrating “scale and influence,” so there’s no real winner or loser.

In his view, the entire public chain ecosystem remains at the conceptual and narrative level, without any critical moment that can verify its long-term value and social impact.

Stablecoins are just small victories; the fundamental structure remains unchanged

Regarding stablecoins, which are seen as a symbol of blockchain adoption, Evgeny offers limited praise. He points out that stablecoins are indeed a “small victory” in crypto, but fundamentally, they are just replacing a centralized intermediary with another, smaller, more efficient intermediary system.

In other words, stablecoins have not changed the power structure of the financial system on a macro level, nor have they fulfilled the promise of decentralization and fundamental transformation.

Perpetual contracts are hard to scale; the real bottleneck lies in the risk engine

On the trading application front, Evgeny criticizes decentralized perpetual contract exchanges more harshly. He states outright that these platforms are “currently unable to truly scale,” and reaching the level of traditional financial giants like CME is extremely difficult.

He emphasizes that industry players have misunderstood the core challenge; the problem isn’t about transactions per second (TPS), but about the design and operation of the risk engine. However, most practitioners still fail to grasp this structural limitation.

Price overrides ideology; the crypto spirit is gradually deteriorating

Evgeny further points out that Bitcoin’s original emphasis on decentralization and privacy has long been replaced by “price appreciation,” and most crypto projects have followed the same path.

He describes how the values once held by cypherpunks have been replaced by a “cyberpunk-style mentality”—the market only cares about “when institutional investors will enter,” while gradually forgetting the mission and original purpose behind cryptocurrencies. In his view, the few remaining thought leaders who still adhere to these original ideals are almost exclusively Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Token economics is “completely broken”; a call to return to first principles

Regarding current popular token economic designs, Evgeny is equally blunt. He states that the entire mechanism is “completely broken”: buybacks are foolish in themselves, and their implementation is even worse; lockups are also meaningless; and although airdrops are widely considered ineffective, the industry has at least reached a consensus on that.

He urges the industry to return to first principles, discard existing formulas and narratives, and conduct more meaningful experiments.

Market cooling off may not be a bad thing; true believers will stay

Despite his sharp criticism, Evgeny ends his thread with an optimistic note. He believes that the crypto industry is gradually moving away from the “Trump pump our bags” speculative frenzy, and the market will once again eliminate short-term speculators, leaving behind those who truly believe in decentralization’s mission.

He concludes with “cypherpunk > cyberpunk,” emphasizing that only by returning to the cypherpunk spirit can the crypto industry hope to enter the next truly valuable phase.