(unfinished) warning: this is basically pure stream of thought writing. very opinionated and under researched. i'm not exactly sure i even fully agree with this argument, i just want to explore what the argument is.

If you asked a random person on the street about cryptocurrency, they probably wouldn't know much about it. If you asked a random person on Market street in san francisco, one of the most common responses would be something like "that shit's a scam". Slightly different than "it's used by criminals, seems sketchy and dangerous", which I imagine to have been the popular response pre 2020. However, going into 2026 I think the space is going to boom more than it ever has. Bitcoin recently hit all time highs, and Base from Coinbase is seeing transaction volume grow exponentially [link].

In fact, I think the industry's greatest danger isn't it's usage by criminals or rug pulling shitcoins. It's that propaganda is at the core of how every cryptocurrency company is creating a monopoly.

First off, I want to clarify that I don't think any company is inherently bad for doing that. Building a monopoly based on a secret is exactly what every founder aspires to do after reading Zero To One. What I do want to focus on is the propaganda part of this. Mainly by walking through how deeply integrated it is in the ecosystem, how that diffuses everywhere, which leads to this ambient sense that "crypto is a scam".

propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.

I've picked three examples of huge players, but I think you can find this pattern across most companies. For each project, I want to talk about 1) what they market them selves as and 2) how they actually make money / what do they actually do. The delta across these prompts, should demonstrate what I mean by propaganda.

Let's start with the biggest player in town: Coinbase. Going all the way back to it's founding story, the original founding team actually didn't even make it to the first day of YC back in 2012. https://www.wired.com/2014/03/what-is-bitcoin/ https://www.coinbase.com/blog/the-coinbase-secret-master-plan

i dont have time to write up the details right now, but here is some slop from chatgpt.

Coinbase

• Business type: Publicly traded U.S. exchange and custodian (NASDAQ: COIN).
• What they say: Increase “economic freedom” via open access to crypto.
• Facts:
  • Operates a centralized order-book exchange; users trade inside Coinbase custody.
  • Requires full KYC/AML; users do not control private keys.
  • ~70 % of revenue from trading fees/spreads; rest from staking, custody, USDC yield share.
  • Profit scales with trading volume and asset volatility, not with real-world use of crypto.
  • Co-founder of USDC (Centre Consortium); receives portion of interest income on reserves.
  • Acts as gatekeeper for listings and staking access.
• Delta: “Open financial system” → centralized brokerage monetizing speculation.

Solana

• System type: Proof-of-stake layer-1 blockchain (Solana Mainnet Beta).
• What they say: Decentralized, high-performance infrastructure for Web3.
• Facts:
  • ~1,400 validators; Nakamoto coefficient ≈ 20–30 — moderate concentration.
  • High hardware requirements (≥512 GB RAM, NVMe SSD, high bandwidth) limit operator diversity.
  • Solana Foundation (Swiss non-profit) funds validators; Solana Labs (U.S. C-corp) builds core client.
  • Early investors (a16z, Polychain, Jump, Alameda, Multicoin) and team hold large token shares.
  • Inflationary issuance (~5 %) funds staking rewards; base fees ≈ 50 % burned, priority fees → validators.
  • MEV via Jito adds validator income, increasing economic centralization.
• Delta: “Mass-participation network” → validator-industrial chain with venture and foundation control.

USDC (Circle)

• System type: Centralized, fiat-backed stablecoin.
• What they say: “Fully reserved, regulated, transparent digital dollar.”
• Facts:
  • Issued by Circle Internet Financial; backed by cash + short-term U.S. Treasuries.
  • Circle admin key can freeze or blacklist addresses; issuance/redemption only through Circle.
  • Monthly attestations, not full audits; reserves custodied by regulated banks & BlackRock MMF.
  • Interest on reserves (~5 %) kept by Circle; users receive no yield
  • Access requires KYC-compliant on-ramps; subject to U.S. jurisdiction and sanctions.
  • Core partners: Coinbase, Visa, Stripe integrations.
• Delta: “Decentralized internet money” → private money-market instrument with centralized control

given this delta of what each project says they do vs what their main incentive is/how they make money, it sets a precedent for the rest of the ecosystem. take solana for example. no one actually knows why solana is better or worse than ethereum. why? because of the delta in marketing and technical education. therefore, you have two mainly independent application layers building on each chain, forming their own communites. then you have the grifters that attatch themselves to their chosen tribe (chain). then these grifters take advantage of this ambiguity and confusion with rug pulling schemes and projects.

the real cypherpunks of the internet will say that everything other than bitcoin and ethereum is a money making scheme.

so some questions im curious about

• why is it so hard to understand how things work
• how does regulation play here
• what tech is good and what is fluff
• is this an obvious idea? why dont people talk about this more

theres a magnification effect of the propaganda. everything boils up from the core technology and its public confusion.

• core company (solana)
• marketing
• application layer
• the kids
• twitter bots crypto has a propaganda problem not a scam problem. companies at the frontier set the precedent for rug pulls.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1jvt4w2/why_does_everyone_hate_on_solana/