“I am NOT building a new financial system. I built a casino.”
This stark admission from Ken Chan, former co-founder of derivatives protocol Aevo, has been reverberating throughout Asian crypto communities this week.
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From Ayn Rand to Disillusionment: A Libertarian’s Journey By Crypto
Chan’s confession shouldn’t be 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. “Being able to walk across the border with a billion dollars in your head is and always will be a powerful idea 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 “literally torched everyone’s money” in pursuit of turning into the subsequent Solana. His verdict is unsparing: “We do not need to build the Casino on Mars.”
Based on his LinkedIn profile, Chan departed Aevo in Could this 12 months. His private web site signifies he’s now engaged on KENSAT, a private satellite tv for pc challenge. 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 absolutely diluted market cap—down roughly 99% from its peak.
Chan’s central metaphor—that crypto has develop into “the biggest, online, multi-player 24/7 casino our generation has ever concocted”—cuts by means of technical complexity with visceral readability.
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Chinese language-language responses have been divided. Some pushed again sharply: “Same eight years—some reach the summit, others exit the stage. Wasting time is your own problem.” Others went additional than Chan himself, with one commenter writing: “The entire crypto circle is foolish, no exceptions. After more than a decade, what blockchain product has the average person actually used?”
Korean responses echoed comparable exhaustion. “Besides stablecoins, there’s no real use case,” famous one dealer. One other was extra blunt: “At the bottom of crypto, there’s no one creating new value for society—just scammers swarming to suck money from retail investors.”
Generational Nervousness Finds a Voice Throughout Borders
Maybe most putting is Chan’s warning that the trade’s “toxic mentality will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility for the younger generation.” 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 provided a parallel reflection with out straight addressing Chan’s publish. “The era of standing alone with just one core skill is passing,” he wrote, recalling a proficient colleague who might compress eight hours of labor into one however by no means bothered to deepen his experience. The ability turned out of date; the particular person moved on.
Whereas Chan questions what the trade has constructed, KKD Whale questions what people have gathered inside it. Each arrive on the identical unsettling vacation spot.
Chan closes with a quote from CMS Holdings: “Do you want to make money, or do you want to be right?” His reply: “I choose to be right this time.”
Six months after leaving the challenge 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.
