I’ve been thinking about this a lot through my consultancy work. I’ll jump from one call to the next, both with people who say they’re “building in crypto”, and the contrast can be pretty stark. Some are genuinely trying to build useful tech. Infrastructure. Tooling. Things that solve real problems and probably won’t get much attention for a while. Others are focused on memes and market mechanics. Attention. Velocity. Riding whatever the current narrative happens to be. And there are still people whose entire plan is just to farm. We always tell those where to shove it, though, but thankfully, most of them are filtered out before they ever get to me. What makes it tricky is that all of these people think they’re operating in the same space. They all say “crypto”. They all use the same language. But they’re often talking about completely different things. Moving between those conversations back to back really drives home how stretched the word “crypto” has become. We’re often comparing apples and pears, then acting surprised when nobody agrees on what good even looks like. At the very least, it’s changed how I listen.