“I’m NOT constructing a brand new monetary system. I constructed a on line casino.”
This stark admission from Ken Chan, former co-founder of derivatives protocol Aevo, has been reverberating throughout Asian crypto communities this week.
What started as a submit on X has now crossed linguistic borders, been launched to Chinese language communities by native information media, and been extensively shared amongst Korean merchants, accumulating tens of millions of views alongside the best way.
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From Ayn Rand to Disillusionment: A Libertarian’s Journey Via Crypto
Chan’s confession is just not merely a critique—it’s the unraveling of a private ideology. He describes himself as a “starry-eyed libertarian” who donated to Gary Johnson’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign after being radicalized by Ayn Rand’s novels. The cypherpunk ethos of Bitcoin spoke on to this worldview. “With the ability to stroll throughout the border with a billion {dollars} in your head is and at all times will probably be a strong thought to me,” he writes.
But eight years of trade expertise eroded that idealism. Chan recounts how the Layer 1 wars—the flood of capital into Aptos, Sui, Sei, ICP, and numerous others—produced no significant progress towards a brand new monetary system. As an alternative, it “actually torched everybody’s cash” in pursuit of changing into the subsequent Solana. His verdict is unsparing: “We don’t must construct the On line casino on Mars.”
In keeping with his LinkedIn profile, Chan departed Aevo in Might this yr. His private web site signifies he’s now engaged on KENSAT, a private satellite tv for pc undertaking. It’s scheduled to launch aboard a Falcon 9 in June 2026. His confession arrives six months after his departure. It comes as AEVO token trades at roughly $45 million in totally diluted market cap—down roughly 99% from its peak.
Chan’s central metaphor—that crypto has change into “the largest, on-line, multi-player 24/7 on line casino our technology has ever concocted”—cuts by way of technical complexity with visceral readability.
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The timing amplifies the message. Following October’s market turbulence and protracted volatility, contributors throughout the area have been grappling with fatigue. The Chinese language media framed the viral unfold as reflecting “collective nervousness amid liquidity drought and narrative vacuum.”
Chinese language-language responses have been divided. Some pushed again sharply: “Similar eight years—some attain the summit, others exit the stage. Losing time is your personal drawback.” Others went additional than Chan himself, with one commenter writing: “All the crypto circle is silly, no exceptions. After greater than a decade, what blockchain product has the typical particular person really used?”
Korean responses echoed comparable exhaustion. “In addition to stablecoins, there’s no actual use case,” famous one dealer. One other was extra blunt: “On the backside of crypto, there’s nobody creating new worth for society—simply scammers swarming to suck cash from retail traders.”
Generational Nervousness Finds a Voice Throughout Borders
Maybe most hanging is Chan’s warning that the trade’s “poisonous mentality will result in the long-term collapse of social mobility for the youthful technology.” This concern resonates deeply in East Asian societies. Conventional paths to wealth—actual property, secure employment—have grown more and more inaccessible. Crypto promised another; Chan suggests it might be accelerating the issue.
Korean analyst KKD Whale supplied a parallel reflection with out instantly addressing Chan’s submit. “The period of standing alone with only one core talent is passing,” he wrote, recalling a proficient colleague who may compress eight hours of labor into one however by no means bothered to deepen his experience. The talent grew to become out of date; the particular person moved on.
Whereas Chan questions what the trade has constructed, KKD Whale questions what people have accrued inside it. Each arrive on the identical unsettling vacation spot.
Chan closes with a quote from CMS Holdings: “Do you need to become profitable, or do you need to be proper?” His reply: “I select to be proper this time.”
Six months after leaving the undertaking he constructed, and with AEVO buying and selling at a fraction of its former worth, the query lingers: Is that this the readability of hindsight, or the comfort of exit? The viral journey of his confession suggests many others are asking themselves the identical query.