When power meets rebellion, history shows us who wins. And it’s not the dreamers.
In 2021, when the Metaverse hype was peaking, I sat as Head of Growth at a leading advertising agency, watching clients line up to “ride the wave.”
Brands scrambled to buy virtual land. They poured millions into pixelated storefronts and ghost malls, terrified of looking outdated.
Consultants promised revolutions. Agencies promised relevance.
I watched it unfold. I quietly thought to myself: this won’t last.
It wasn’t cynicism. It was pattern recognition.
The spending spree wasn’t driven by consumer behavior or organic demand. It was driven by fear.
And just as I suspected, it all went quiet.
Big brands abandoned their virtual spaces. Agencies stopped bragging about their “first metaverse campaigns.”
The grand revolution faded into an awkward hush.
Today, names like Adidas, Carrefour, HSBC, and even JPMorgan — who proudly launched their metaverse stores and lounges — barely mention those projects.
What was once a noisy parade has become a ghost story, filed under “emerging tech experiments.”
Now, watching the world of crypto, I’m seeing the same emotional rollercoaster again.
And I’m not convinced the ending will be much different.
The Illusion of Freedom
Crypto was supposed to liberate humanity from banks, governments, and centralized power.
It offered a seductive promise: borderless, permissionless, anonymous financial freedom.
Bitcoin’s whitepaper didn’t just launch a technology. It launched a philosophy.
A rebellion against the gatekeepers of the financial world.
But here’s the thing about freedom: it’s never been given willingly by those who hold power.
Not in money. Not in history.
Gold once offered private wealth. Until governments centralized it.
Cash once allowed anonymous exchange. Until anti-money laundering laws demanded identification.
Offshore banking once sheltered fortunes. Until FATCA and global transparency initiatives cracked it open.
Crypto imagined it could sidestep the historical pattern.
But history, as always, had other plans.
The Reality of Control
Money isn’t just a medium of exchange.
It’s a tool of governance.
Control the money, control the economy. Control the economy, control the narrative.
Governments and financial institutions aren’t just interested in facilitating transactions.
They need to:
- Fund wars.
- Manage recessions.
- Stabilize markets.
- Enforce taxation.
- Monitor illicit activity.
Letting a truly decentralized, uncontrollable financial system dominate would be the equivalent of voluntarily dismantling their core power structure.
And power, by nature, doesn’t dismantle itself.
Crypto, in the eyes of the old world, isn’t innovation.
It’s insubordination.
And insubordination gets corrected.
Ignore. Ridicule. Regulate. Absorb.
The lifecycle of disruptive technologies that threaten power tends to follow a ritual.
- First, they ignore it. Bitcoin floated in obscurity for years, a curiosity for technophiles.
- Then, they ridicule it. Crypto was painted as a playground for criminals and speculators.
- Then, they regulate it. Today, we see KYC (Know Your Customer) rules, SEC lawsuits, licensing regimes, and FATF guidelines applied globally.
- Finally, they absorb it.
Banks offer “crypto custody” services.
Governments develop their own blockchain-based currencies.
Financial institutions tokenize assets within traditional frameworks.
The playbook is clear:
If you can’t kill it, regulate it, tax it, absorb it — and brand it safe.
This absorption is happening most visibly through the push for CBDCs — Central Bank Digital Currencies.
These digital currencies mimic the technological efficiencies of crypto but operate under complete government control.
With programmable features, traceability, and the ability to enforce monetary policy instantly, CBDCs represent the ultimate paradox:
- All the technology of decentralization.
- All the control of traditional finance.
Crypto may have kicked open the door, but the system is busy remodeling the house.
The Crypto Rollercoaster
Meanwhile, inside the crypto ecosystem, another emotional pattern unfolded.
A pattern I watched closely. Skeptically.
Wild surges. Gut-wrenching crashes. Sudden fortunes. Spectacular bankruptcies.
Crypto didn’t move like a steady technology adoption curve. It moved like an emotional casino.
At the peaks, self-proclaimed “millionaires” strutted around, their wealth denominated in tokens floating on a cloud of collective belief.
NFTs selling for millions. Meme coins making overnight legends.
All virtual. All unanchored.
It wasn’t that the underlying technology had matured.
It was that speculation had outpaced understanding.
And as always, when speculation becomes the main driver, reality eventually calls.
We saw it with the dotcom bubble.
We saw it with the Metaverse.
We are seeing it with crypto.
The technology is real.
The fantasy of overnight world domination isn’t.
The Myth of Financial Utopia
Every major financial revolution begins with utopian promises.
Stock markets were once seen as engines of collective wealth. Until they became machines for speculation and inequality.
Banks were supposed to democratize savings. Until they consolidated into towering institutions too big to fail.
Insurance was designed as mutual protection. Until profit margins redefined the very meaning of “risk.”
Crypto fits into this lineage.
The dream was noble: financial autonomy, individual sovereignty, permissionless trade.
But without cultural, political, and economic shifts to accompany it, the gravitational pull of old systems remains too strong.
Technology alone doesn’t erase power structures.
If anything, it often gets co-opted to reinforce them.
Crypto is no different.
The utopia sold was real in spirit — but incomplete in strategy.
Crypto Will Survive. But It Will Be Mutated.
Let’s be clear:
Crypto isn’t going to vanish.
Blockchain isn’t going away.
There’s too much genuine utility in peer-to-peer settlement, in tokenization, in borderless value transfer.
But the dream of a fully decentralized, anonymous, unregulated financial system becoming the norm?
That dream will remain confined to the margins.
The mainstream future of crypto looks more like:
- Government-approved stablecoins.
- Crypto ETFs.
- Tokenized stocks.
- Blockchain-based systems operated by licensed entities.
In other words:
Crypto technologies will be used to upgrade the financial system — not overthrow it.
The rebels will find themselves back inside the system.
Only the fringe will remain truly decentralized — operating in the shadows or in failed states.
The wild frontier will be fenced off.
The revolution will be monetized.
And those who think they’re escaping the system will simply be entering it through a shinier door.
The Original Dream Isn’t Dead — It’s Just Postponed
When I sat at that agency desk in 2021, I didn’t enjoy predicting the Metaverse collapse.
I simply recognized the underlying dynamics: fear-driven adoption without user-driven demand always ends badly.
Today, with crypto, I see something similar — but deeper.
This isn’t about whether blockchain is good or bad.
It’s about who controls the corridors of money and power.
Until the world’s gatekeepers figure out how to fully regulate, absorb, and reframe crypto, the dream of total financial freedom will remain just that — a dream.
Technology can open doors.
But only strategy, persistence, and societal change can walk through them.
Real decentralization isn’t a technological inevitability.
It’s a political and cultural struggle. One that requires more than code.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The fight for decentralized financial freedom isn’t lost.
It’s just far longer, far messier, and far more political than most early believers wanted to imagine.
Crypto won’t truly win until it learns to resist not just technological challenges — but the gravitational pull of old power itself.
And if history teaches us anything, it’s this:
Revolutions that don’t plan for the counterattack end up becoming part of the system they tried to replace.
The Crypto Dream Was Never About You was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.