A Tribute to Degens, a Pioneer in Early Adoption of Crypto
Written by: Qiao Wang
Compiled by: Xiaobai Navigation coderworld
A few months ago, I realized:cryptocurrencyIn the venture capital world, “speculation” is the idea most often opposed, but among crypto users it is the most common consensus.
I’m certainly not talking about all crypto VCs, but many of them arecryptocurrencySome even see it as a moral issue and openly ridicule the idea of speculation and the investors who engage in it.
I'm not sure where this condescending attitude comes from. I have some hypotheses. Maybe they come from upper-middle or upper-class families and never had financial pressure as children.make moneyMaybe they see their peers investing in AI, nuclear fusion, and space and can’t justify their existence to themselves or their limited partners (LPs). Maybe they feel guilty about using Degens as their own exit liquidity and try to rationalize their moral stance.
Whatever the reason, it is either intellectually dishonest or completely unfounded. Here’s why: “DegXiaobai Navigationens” is synonymous with “early adopter.”
cryptocurrencyDegens与早期互联网采纳者本质上没有什么不同，后者在像SSL这样的技术开发之前就已经使用了第一批电子邮件客户端和公告板。只不过互联网是信息高速公路，而加密货币是金融高速公路。因此，几乎可以肯定地说，Early adopters of cryptocurrencies should be those financial risk takers who are willing to try unproven products.
Venture capitalists want to see DeFi disrupt Wall Street. But who will be the first 100 users to risk their hard-earned money on an unproven financial protocol? It’s the Degens.
Venture capitalists want to seeTokenBut who will be the first to spend $1,000 to buy Helium hotspots and earn volatile and illiquidTokenThe top 100? Also Degens.
Venture capitalists want to see NFTs create new intellectual property to compete with Hollywood and Nintendo. But who will be the first 100 buyers of the "non-real-use" penguin NFTs that Pudgy World is not ready to put into production? Degens again.
Will the average venture capitalist try these new things? No. They are too risk averse and the opportunity cost is too high.
So when you start laughing at Degens, you're actually laughing at the first 100 users of that system you were philosophizing about from your ivory tower.
One of the most underrated results of Degens activity in the early days of cryptocurrency was that it helped test ourBlockchain, Summary,wallet,Oracle,Bridge,RPC Nodes, etc. Without Degens, we would never know how big our infrastructure is.Safetyand scalability. Degens hacks and high gas fees are what have motivated our entire industry to focus on creating moreSafety, reasons for cheaper systems.
Now someone might say, “I get it, Degens did a lot for our industry, but now the entire industry has become a pure speculative casino.” I completely sympathize with that view. A world where the only use of cryptocurrency is speculation is not a world I want to build. But the idea that speculation is the only use of cryptocurrency is completely wrong.
The reason for this common perception is that speculation is the thing that gets all the attention. When a Nigerian teenager studying in Turkey used USDT to send a cross-border payment from home to his dorm, no one cared. But stories like this happen every day around the world and are growing at an incredible rate. I know this because I have spoken to about 50 crypto neo-banks and remittance startups in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia that are generating revenue and growing. According to a recent report from Chainanalysis, India, Nigeria, and Vietnam are the top three countries with the highest cryptocurrency adoption. According to a new report from BH Digital, $14 trillion worth of stablecoins will be settled on-chain in 2022, surpassing Paypal. I haven’t seen such strong product-market fit in crypto in a long time.
But guess what? Even stablecoins are powered by Degens. One of the first use cases for USDT was cross-currencyexchangeArbitrage, because the settlement speed of stablecoin transfers is several orders of magnitude faster than that of fiat currency rails, and fast settlement improves the capital efficiency of arbitrageurs.AIOne of the first use cases is leveraged trading, where ETH is deposited into Maker to create DAI, and then use it to buy more ETH. Without Degens, stablecoin holders might not have reached critical mass, and we might still be looking at the first non-speculative mainstream use case for cryptocurrency today.
I love Degens on-chain. Partly because it helps satisfy my instinctual brain dopamine needs. Just as importantly, it helps me intuitively understand the top 100 users. But I also want to build an open, borderless, permissionless, transparent, composable, user-owned financial system and network. That's why I got into crypto. The two visions are not contradictory. The decentralized utopia needs open-minded, risk-seeking, thrill-seeking pioneers.
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