Pomp Says Most Crypto Is Dead… But Here’s What He’s Missing

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:02]Hey, what is going on crypto people?

[00:00:04]Anthony Pompiano just said most of the crypto industry is dead and it's never coming back. And honestly, he's not wrong. But I think some people are going to hear that message and take the lazy conclusion. They're going to say, "See, only Bitcoin matters.

[00:00:23]Everything else is debt." And I don't think that's the full picture. So, in this video, I want to break down where I agree with Pomp, where I think he's absolutely right, where I think people are going to misunderstand the message, and why the real future of crypto is not about every token surviving.

[00:00:41]It's about the market separating real financial structure from dead speculation because that is what I think is actually happening.

[00:00:51]The crypto market is it's splitting. On one side, you have ghost chains and zombie coins, meme tokens, and vaporware projects, right? You got we have these hype cycles and communities holding on to 2017 and 2021 dreams. On the other side, you have Bitcoin, stable coins, tokenization, institutional rails, DeFi infrastructure, and settlement network settlement networks, custody, liquidity, and real world financial plumbing. And if you're an investor on the journey to becoming a sophisticated investor or if you are trying to understand where this market is going, that distinction matters because saying most crypto is dead is not the same thing as saying only Bitcoin wins.

[00:01:38]Those are two very different statements and I think the nuance that is missing. So let's talk about it.

[00:01:44]Pomp's basic point is actually it's pretty simple. He said most of the crypto industry is dead but people do not realize it yet. And one of the reason he gives is that crypto does not go through a normal business cycle. In a normal business cycle companies fail, they shut down. Capital moves on. Talent moves on. The bad ideas get cleared out.

[00:02:07]But in crypto, that doesn't always happen. A blockchain can keep running as long as a few people keep the software alive.

[00:02:15]A token can keep trading as long as a few people still believe.

[00:02:20]So instead of officially dying, a lot of crypto projects just become irrelevant irrelevant.

[00:02:26]They don't go to zero necessarily. They just lose liquidity. They lose users.

[00:02:31]They lose developers. They lose mind share. And they lose purpose. But because the token still has a price and because the chain still technically exists, people pretend the project is still alive. That is what Pomp called ghost chains and domcoins. And I think that's a powerful way to explain it because we all know this is true.

[00:02:54]There are thousands of tokens that are technically still tradable. But nobody is really using them. Nobody's building on them.

[00:03:03]Nobody's talking about them unless they are already trapped in the position.

[00:03:08]There are projects that had massive hype in 2017. I can name a few of them.

[00:03:12]Massive hype in 2021. in fact, and now they're just sitting there, still listed, still alive on paper, but dead in terms of relevance.

[00:03:23]And that's the part I agree with strongly. Most crypto will not matter.

[00:03:28]Most tokens will not survive. Most chains do not need to exist.

[00:03:35]Most projects were never real businesses in the first place. Most communities were just price appreciation communities. And once the price stopped going up, the community disappeared.

[00:03:47]That's the hard truth. It blows. But it's the truth. And I think retail investors need to hear that because the old altcoin mindset was basically this.

[00:03:56]Just hold on long enough and eventually everything pumps. That mindset mindset worked better in previous cycles. We talked about the micro cycles are changing because liquidity was different. Retail behavior was different. the market was less mature.

[00:04:13]There were fewer tokens. There was less institutional involvement and there was uh more of a broad risk of on environment where capital flowed into almost everything VCs throwing money around like cray cray. But that's not the same market we are in now. This market is it's more selective. It's more efficient.

[00:04:34]It's more institutional.

[00:04:37]And it is more native driven. It is more liquidity sensitive than ever and it's much less forgiving. So I agree with Pont when he says most of crypto is dead. But here's where I want to add the nuance. The conclusion is not only Bitcoin matters. You know, you know how the Bitcoiners do, right? The conclusion is only real utility, real liquidity, real infrastructure, real adoption and real financial relevance will matter.

[00:05:08]That includes Bitcoin of course, but it's not limited to Bitcoin. And this is where I think a lot of people going to get the message wrong because Bitcoin maximalists will hear Pomp say most crypto is dead and they will say exactly that mean Bitcoin only. But it doesn't mean that. But even in Pomp's own framework, he did not say only Bitcoin.

[00:05:28]He said he thinks four major areas will acrue value moving forward. Bitcoin, stable coins, infrastructure, and tokenization.

[00:05:37]That is not a Bitcoin only thesis.

[00:05:40]That's a financial infrastructure thesis. And that is a very different conversation because if if stable coins matter then payment rails matter. Hello.

[00:05:52]If tokenization matters then settlement rails matter. If in if infrastructure matters then custody, interoperability, liquidity, compliance, data and decentralized apps matter. So if the old financial system is being upgraded, then we have to ask what assets are part of that upgrade?

[00:06:16]What networks are part of that upgrade?

[00:06:18]What protocols are part of that upgrade? What rails are actually useful?

[00:06:26]That's the real question. Not just is this Bitcoin or not Bitcoin. That's too simple. The better question is does this asset or network have a real role in the future financial system?

[00:06:39]Because there's a huge difference between a random altcoin with a Telegram community and a network or asset that is connected to payments, settlement, liquidity, collateral. Say it again.

[00:06:50]Collateral, right? Tokenization, DeFi, or institutional infrastructure. Those are not the same thing. And this is why I keep saying the market is splitting.

[00:07:00]It's not because it's not really Bitcoin versus every other coin. It is real infrastructure versus dead speculation.

[00:07:08]That's the split. Now, let's talk about this legacy finance for a second because this is another big part of Palm's message. He talks about how traditional financial firms are moving into crypto, right? Morgan Stanley here recently with that ETF, right? Erade, Zero Hash, right? ETFs as a whole, brokerage platforms, institutional custody, tokenization, XRP. Oh, hello. And he basically says crypto is being absorbed into the legacy financial system. And again, I agree with part of that.

[00:07:41]Legacy finance is absolutely coming.

[00:07:43]Banks are coming. The good ones, not the top 10, either 10. Brokerages are coming. Asset managers are coming.

[00:07:51]Custodians are coming.

[00:07:53]Tokenized funds are coming. Stablecoin infrastructure, yeah, it's on its way.

[00:07:57]And a lot of crypto uh native companies are going to either get acquired, replaced, or forced to compete with much bigger players.

[00:08:06]That's real. But I don't think the endgame is simply legacy finance absorbs crypto and that is the end of the story.

[00:08:15]I think the better framing is this.

[00:08:16]Legacy finance will absorb the parts of crypto it can control. Hm. Another video on Clarity Act is coming by the way. But crypto will preserve value in the parts legacy finance cannot easily control.

[00:08:30]It's important that distinction matters because Bitcoin is valuable because it is not just a Wall Street product, right? Self-custody matters big time.

[00:08:40]Decentralization matters. Open networks matter. And permissionless access without question matters. DeFi matters.

[00:08:49]Programmable money matters. The ability to move value without needing permission from the old gatekeepers matters.

[00:08:57]Now will all of that survive in its purest form? Not sure. Probably not.

[00:09:03]Some of it will get regulated. Some of it will get wrapped. Some of it will get institutionalized.

[00:09:09]Okay? Some of it will get absorbed into traditional finance. But the core innovation of crypto was not simply giving Wall Street another asset class to trade.

[00:09:21]The core innovation was open financial rails and that is why I don't think the future is just Bitcoin sitting inside an ETF wrapper. Bitcoin is part of it. It's a major part of it. Probably the reserve collateral asset of the entire digital asset space right now. You can make the argument that Bitcoin's winning that race. But the broader future includes stable coins. It includes tokenized asset includes decentralized collateral markets. It includes smart contracts and DeFi rails. It includes RWA to uh tokenization. It also includes crosschain liquidity, custody solutions, identity and compliance layers. Right?

[00:10:01]We can't Right. It's going to include infrastructure that makes the financial system faster, cheaper, and more transparent and more programmable. That's not dead.

[00:10:11]That's just getting started.

[00:10:14]But the weak stuff, it's dying. And honestly, it should. We do not need a million tokens. We don't need thousands of blockchains. We don't need endless endless meme coins. Endless. We don't need vaporware launches certainly. And we don't need fake communities built only around price and you know these insider stuff. You know, we do need projects that exist only we don't need projects that exist only to farm, retail, liquidate.

[00:10:43]A lot of that going on. The industry doesn't need the industry does not need or does need clearing. And what I mean by clearing is you know the weak and the chaff all that get it useful right some people want to lump everything under utility but it's not lumped under it's not all under just utility. So the industry needs a clearing and that's part of message that I think is healthy because crypto has a massive credibility challenge. Too many scams, too many rugs, right? Too many pump and dumps, too many insiders dumping on retail, too many of these fake partnerships and projects with no revenue, no users, no product market fist.

[00:11:25]And if we're honest, that hurts the industry. It made it harder for serious builders. It made it re it made regulators more aggressive, right? It made institutions significantly more cautious. It made retail more skeptical.

[00:11:40]That's the biggest one of them all. And it gave Bitcoin maxis a very easy argument.

[00:11:48]So yes, the garbage needs to die. But here's where we need to be super careful. Don't confuse the death of garbage crypto with the death of innovation outside of Bitcoin. That's the mistake. A bad memecoin dying does not mean DeFi is dead. A ghost chain dying doesn't mean tokenization is dead.

[00:12:06]Zombie coins dying doesn't mean stable coins are dead. Right? How many failed NF NFT projects have there been? A failed NFT project dying doesn't mean digital ownership is dead. Quite the opposite.

[00:12:20]A bad old coin dying doesn't mean non Bitcoin assets have no purpose. That's just lazy analysis.

[00:12:29]The real analysis is which part of crypto are speculation only and which parts are becoming infrastructure. That's the line. That's the study. That's the homework. That's the question you have to constantly keep asking. Which parts of crypto are speculation only? And that's okay. And which parts are becoming infrastructure?

[00:12:50]That's the line. So when I look at the market, I think there are a few categories that matter. Number one is Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin is the reserve asset winning that race. It is the most institutionally accepted digital asset.

[00:13:01]Whether we like it or not, it is what it is. It has the strongest monetary narrative.

[00:13:07]It has the ETF flows. It has the brand.

[00:13:10]It has the security. Has the simplence simplicity.

[00:13:14]Bitcoin is digital scarcity. Both of those phrases, both that word digital scarcity, that's a big big thing and that's powerful. Number two, stable coins. Of course, stable coins may be one of the clearest use cases in the entire crypto industry, especially because of this whole US dollar deal, right? So, they move dollars faster.

[00:13:33]They settle across borders. They give people access to DAO liquidity, right?

[00:13:38]They're already being used in payments and remittances, trading, DeFi, and global commerce. So, if you want to talk about real adoption, stable coins are not theoretical, right? They're here.

[00:13:48]Number three, tokenization. Hello. Say hello to my little friend, the XRPL.

[00:13:54]Tokenization is the bridge between traditional assets and digital rails, right? Stocks, bonds, treasuries, real estate, right? moving anything of value in three to five seconds for less than a penny.

[00:14:06]That's the XRP. All right. So, treasuries, real estate, private credit funds, collateral, say it again with me, fam. Collateral, all of that can move on chain over time. And that's why institutions care. They're not coming into crypto because they care about dog coins. That they're coming because they see the future of markets and they see that future becoming programmable.

[00:14:29]Number four, infrastructure.

[00:14:31]This is the less sexy category if you will, but it might be one of the most important.

[00:14:38]Custody, data, oracles, compliance, liquidity, interoperability, security, settlement. That's a lot of different assets or tokens that could cover that, right? Wallet, UX, identity, DeFi, infrastructure. These are the rails. And the rails matter because most users don't care what chain they're using.

[00:14:57]Most don't do that. They care whether the system works. They care whether it's safe. They care whether it is simple.

[00:15:03]And they care whether they can access liquidity. Think about that. They care whether they can earn yield without getting wrecked. Just did a video on that, right? I'm high on flare networks.

[00:15:13]They care whether they can move value without friction. That's where infrastructure matters. And then number five, I would add something that Pomp did not emphasize enough in my view.

[00:15:26]Defi. Now I understand why some people are skeptical of DeFi. A lot of DeFi has been circular. A lot of it has been speculative. A lot of it has been kind of over complicated, right? A lot of it has bad risk management.

[00:15:40]But the concept of DeFi is not dead. The concept is actually massive. It's trending up to the right in my view. So the concept of borrowing and lending, trading, collateral, uh trading and collateral yield, liquidity, automated market mak, uh market makers, onchain transparency, programmable financial contracts. That's real stuff. The question is not whether DeFi matters.

[00:16:04]The question is which DeFi protocols, networks, and assets can survive regulation, right? Liquidity pressure, security risk, and institutional competition.

[00:16:16]That's where the market gets selective.

[00:16:18]And that brings me back to the most important point. The next phase of crystal crypto is not going to reward everything is going to reward those assets and networks that are connected to real financial utility. That's why investors need to stop asking in my view what is cheap, what is down 90%.

[00:16:40]What has a community? I talk about this all the time about the real assets being more valuable with the higher the price are, right? The real assets having, you know, gone from 1 cents to now 10 cents to now a dollar, having survived markets, bull cycles and bare cycles and are still here, still building, still evolving.

[00:16:59]People think because the price is more expensive that it's less valuable, which is actually the other way around.

[00:17:08]So right these questions again what's cheap what's down 90% what has the community what pumped last cycle what are people hyping on X and they need to change and start asking better questions does the network have real users does this asset have a real role is there liquidity is there developer activity is there institutional relevance right even if there is there revenue is there product market fit Is there a reason this token should capture value? Right, it's a great question. Is this connected to stable coins and tokenization, settlement, collateral, payments, or infrastructure?

[00:17:49]Can this survive in a more regulated environment? Can this survive when the retail hype's not enough?

[00:17:58]Those are the questions because a lot of people are still investing like it's 2021.

[00:18:03]They're waiting for the full-blown altcoin cycle where everything goes crazy. And maybe we still get pockets of speculation. Maybe we still get narative pumps.

[00:18:14]Maybe we still get windows where certain altcoins outperform. That's what I think is going to be the key.

[00:18:21]Not financial advice, but I just happen to be looking at Zcash. I'm like, what the world? It smashed Bitcoin. Why? Why did it smash Bitcoin here in the last six, nine months? What's going on?

[00:18:32]What's the narrative?

[00:18:35]Right? But I don't think the market is going back to the old days where every random token gets rewarded just because it exists, right? The Wag me uh era. I think that's over. I think it's fading. And that's why Pomp's video matters. Not because he says something completely new. I mean, come on. Most people, most serious people already know that most tokens are going away. But he said it clearly. He said it publicly and he framed it as a warning and I think retail needs that warning quite honestly because hope is not a strategy. Holding a dead token out of loyalty it's not a strategy. Right. Right. So holding a dead token because it used to be popular that's not a strategy either. Calling something undervalued because it's down 95%. It's not a strategy.

[00:19:21]Saying it has to come back. It has to come back. It's not a strategy.

[00:19:25]Sometimes it doesn't have to come back. Sometimes it is dead.

[00:19:30]Sometimes the market's just moved on, right? Liquidity is gone, right?

[00:19:34]Sometimes the narrative is gone.

[00:19:36]Sometimes the builders are gone, right?

[00:19:38]I think Casper, I think about Axelr as examples, right? Sometimes the builders are gone. Sometimes the only thing left is the backholders.

[00:19:47]And I get it. That's hard to hear, but it is necessary because we're on a journey of becoming a sophisticated investor. Now, here's the balance that uh take. I agree with Pomp that most crypto's dead. I agree the ghost chains and zombie coins are everywhere.

[00:20:03]I agree that too many people in industry are mercenaries and not missionaries.

[00:20:08]Right. So I get that. I agree that the market needs more serious builders and fewer carnival projects. Sure. And I also agree that legacy finance is entering space in a major way. Now I agree that Bitcoin and stable coins and infrastructure and tokenization are probably among the biggest value occurring categories but I disagree with anyone who hears that and says only Bitcoin matters right because that skips the actual transformation uh transformation happening underneath the surface. The financial system is being rebuilt slowly at times messy, imperfectly, sure, with regulation, with institutions, with custody, with tokenization, with stable coins, and with DeFi, right? With programmable assets, with new rails, and yes, with Bitcoin at the center as a reserve asset, but not Bitcoin alone.

[00:21:08]The winners will be fewer. The winners will be stronger. The winners will probably be more boring than people expect. And the winners will be connected to real financial use cases.

[00:21:20]So the message is not crypto is dead.

[00:21:22]The message is real crypto is dead, speculative crypto is dying, fake utility is dying, but real digital uh asset infrastructure is moving closer to the center of finance. That's the opportunity and that's also the risk because if you're holding assets that are not connected to that future, you have to be honest with yourself. Are you investing in the future of finance or are you emotionally attached to a token from the last cycle? That's a hard hard question to ask, but that is the question. And I think every crypto institization is attracting institutions at a big time rate. Infrastructure is becoming more important. DeFi is still young in my view and is still evolving, but the long tale of random tokens is getting exposed. And that is why I think Pomp is directionally right.

[00:22:33]But the deeper takeaway is not Bitcoin versus crypto. The deeper takeaway is real rails versus dead speculation.

[00:22:41]That is the split in my opinion. And if you understand that split early enough, you can make better decisions. You can stop chasing every shiny object and you can stop holding every dead bag.

[00:22:55]It's okay. You can stop pretending every project deserves another cycle and you can start asking the important questions. Where is the real value going? Where is the real liquidity going? Where is the real adoption going?

[00:23:10]Right? Mentor always taught me that in business CJ, find out where everyone else is going.

[00:23:17]and then get there first.

[00:23:19]Where's the real infrastructure being built? Because that's the where that's where the future is. So my final thought is this, real simple. Palms morning useful. Most crypto probably is dead, but digital assets are not dead, my friend. The infrastructure layer is not dead. Neither is tokenization. Stable coins aren't dead. DeFi is not dead. And for sure, settlement rails are not dead.

[00:23:45]The idea of more open programmable financial system is not dead. What is dying is the illusion that every token deserves to survive.

[00:23:58]And honestly, that's probably a good thing because the sooner the market clears out the noise, the sooner the serious builders, the serious assets, and serious infrastructure can actually stand out. And that's where I think the real opportunity is. So, not in pretending everything will make it, but inident but in identifying what actually deserves to. All right, fam. There it is. I appreciate you guys checking in. I'll talk to you guys soon. See you.

[00:24:29]Bye.