Crypto serves as a lightning rod for bad actors

I am openly hostile toward cryptocurrency, NFT, web3, and other blockchain gimmicks. Aaaaaand that’s not going to change any time soon. Even still, there is a genuine, no-BS, for-real-for-real positive outcome for society. That’s not to say crypto is a net positive - don’t be silly¹. But this goat rodeo is going to stick around a while so we might as well admire the silver lining.

Crypto serves as a lightning rod for bad actors

Bad eggs will be bad eggs, typically laced throughout society and difficult to recognize. But crypto offers something new. A non-existent barrier to entry, nascent norms, absent oversight, high hype, low literacy, inexhaustible capital; you can’t imagine a field with more gravity for malintent. Vaporware, predatory speculation, willful negligence, criminal services, Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dumps, and every stripe of grift cannot escape crypto’s once-a-generation promise of an easy buck.

Anecdotally, my industry seems noticeably cleaner than it was a decade back. The field is championed by serious practitioners and careful investors. If the crypto dumpster wasn’t burning, cybersecurity may still carry significantly more grifty developers, cash-out founders, lazy investors, and vaporware. If malfeasance is willing to self-concentrate into the overtly speculative crypto sideshow instead of woven across more serious industry, we may be better for it.

I want to be clear about what I am not saying:

• Not all crypto-adjacent companies are bad actors. If crypto is a casino, some firms have made the casino safer. Other firms accept limited niches of actual use cases, narrow as they are. Still others are genuinely, or at least harmlessly, chasing real moonshot potential. But it isn’t controversial to suggest that most crypto firms do not fit those molds.
• Not every crypto worker is a bad egg. Tons are decent people are just working a job. Others are true believers. But it isn’t controversial to suggest that most crypto bros and brodettes do not fit those molds, either.
• Plenty of bad actors exist elsewhere. For instance, cyber is cleaner but not clean. Lightning rods don’t catch every strike.