The thing about crypto being immutable is that it's a digital problem, not a real one in the sense of Philip K. Dick's idea of reality. Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop thinking about it. 

Cold mediums like records, paintings, and sculptures don't need that upkeep. They persist whether or not someone maintains them. A vinyl record warps, a painting fades, a sculpture crumbles, but they don't disappear the moment a network goes down or a consensus protocol fails. Crypto, by contrast, is built on digital fallibility—what's called "immutability" depends on an infrastructure that demands constant energy, maintenance, and belief.

It's a forever subscription model. The moment you stop paying into the system—whether in attention, in computing resources, or in raw belief—it starts slipping away, like a lapsed domain name or an abandoned MMO.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The whole crypto ethos was built on the idea that it’s an escape from traditional finance, a revolution that supersedes the old system. But the reality is that it was a product of that system—specifically, a product of zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP).

Crypto thrived in a world where capital was desperately seeking returns. With rates at zero, institutional money had to move further out on the risk curve—tech stocks, venture capital moonshots, and eventually, digital assets with no intrinsic value beyond the belief that they’d appreciate. Crypto wasn’t a hedge against the system; it was the system, just in a more volatile, deregulated form.

Antiques dealer, machine psychologist. http://www.musicinphasespace.com

And yet, many still can’t see it—because seeing it means admitting that crypto was never an escape from the system. It was just another yield-chasing instrument, made possible by the same cheap money that fueled everything from unprofitable tech startups to WeWork-style Ponzi schemes. If crypto was built for a world where the future was cheap, then what does it become now that the future has a price?

But belief is a function of liquidity. As long as money was cheap and abundant, narratives like “Bitcoin as digital gold” or “DeFi as the future of finance” didn’t need to be proven—they just needed to be believed long enough for more capital to enter. The endless flow of new entrants made everything look sustainable. The forever subscription model held because nobody was really paying the bill yet.

Then interest rates rose. Capital stopped sloshing around and started demanding returns. Suddenly, the “forever” part of the model started breaking down. The networks that were supposed to be self-sustaining began to shrink. Token values collapsed, yield mechanisms imploded, and the liquidity that had masked every structural weakness dried up.

intersubjective mechanism design @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

I like these unflinching, thoughtful, well-written takes. We need more of this kind of critical thinking in crypto. 

Brings to mind something else I just read in my feed: 

"crypto is a meat grinder of broken dreams" ~ @kenny

🔥🔥🔥🔥

But will the system eat itself? And will something new emerge from the ashes.

Crypto thrived on excess liquidity. The next era will prove if it can stand on its own.