Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

I left earlier this year, and worked in the space for a couple of years. I started with a neutral position on crypto, I didn't even think about it much. More like, its easy and pays well. But if people want to waste their money on tokens, go for it, but its not my cup of tea.

Then I started to recognize that its predatory and actually not benign or harmless. It is taking advantage of people. It started to become gross, and nobody I worked with shared any views or skepticism that I had. They all pretty much treated it like a religion across the board. Glad I left. I turned down money that most would not get a chance at in their lifetime, but where that money came from did not sit right with me, nobody in that company deserved any of it. I guess I was not cutthroat enough ... seems like this space is reserved only for snakes, and fools.

I'm one of the "haters". I see no value in crypto in 99.99% of crypto and in the cases that do make sense the actual use for it is borderline money laundering or tax evasion. All the "enthusiasts" seem to want to get rich by getting as many people as they can in their greater fool scheme of choice in the hopes of becoming a Bitcoin billionaire. The obnoxious fan base and practical scams coming out of the marketing department are what I despise most about the whole thing.

However, I don't foster any negative feelings towards developers per se. A job's a job, and crypto isn't exactly as easy as your run of the mill CRUD application development.

By working in the ethereum space you've proven you can work with/around obscure tools, learn strange jargon, probably have some knowledge of cryptographic algorithms, and a willingness to do a deep dive in what you believe in. I'm no hiring manager, but to me that all seems like a bunch of skills that will transfer to many businesses outside crypto.

There's more to a person than what areas of business they have experience in. You can work for Big Oil, Facebook/Google/UmbrellaCorp, or Nestlé and be a perfectly good person just doing their job. Anyone refusing you simply because you worked in crypto at some point is short-sighted.

Even if you are a crucial part in the next big rug-pull-sold-as-ending-world-hunger, I honestly doubt you'll run into too many ethical qualms unless you screw up enough to actually break the law and get caught. It's not like Meta or Wells Fargo suddenly care about ethics if you can talk things straight enough, most big companies are morally bankrupt anyway.

I've been in crypto since 2014.

I just had the California Franchise Tax Board literally steal money out of a bank account of mine without any warning or notice. They left $0.01 in there and charged a $125 fee. I found out today they are claiming I owe taxes from when I wasn't even living in the country (and I was paying taxes then too!). In 2021/2022, I paid more taxes than I ever have in my life. I even over paid just to make sure that I was fully covered, including additional property taxes now that I purchased a place. I'm not some crypto tax dodger at all, I pay more than my fair share because that is the right thing to do.

Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash (thankfully they picked the 'wrong' account!). I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this?

Things like this really make me want to double down on crypto. Not your keys, not your coins is taking on a whole new meaning for me. It is easy to say "well, that's never happened to me. crypto is a waste. i have no use for this stuff", but if all it takes is some faceless government entity to wipe out your entire bank account without any notice... then obviously something is wrong with the system.

As for future employability... that's silly. Any place that wouldn't hire you because of where you worked in the past isn't a place you'd want to work at anyway. I hire people because they have the skills and attitude that I'm looking for.

I can only speak for myself, but even though I am very skeptical of DeFi and crypto, I don't look down my nose at people simply because they see it differently. I do look down my nose at people who are deliberately running scams, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that.

I think there's a dark side to most things, and that in the beginning it's not easy to see what it is. For example, I think that social media can be destructive to society and to individual people in a variety of ways that weren't at all obvious to me when I was younger. I don't think it was bad to believe in it, though -- it did, in fact, make the internet useful and accessible to way more people, and that's probably a good thing in the long run, even with all the problems that come with that.

In the worst case, you'd have to tell a future employer, "I went to work in DeFi because I believed in the potential of the underlying technology, but [IT DIDN'T WORK OUT || I DON'T BELIEVE IN IT ANYMORE] and now I'm ready to move on." That sounds pretty reasonable to me?

I think you should get out. We are at a critical point now where the criticism for crypto has hit the mainstream, and over the last market cycle that criticism was proven to be true: that crypto is largely predatory in nature and has few if any real world applications has been proven out. Maybe your project is different, but the industry works in some pretty dark ways.

There are lots of informed crypto skeptics that understand finance, economics, and distributed systems enough to know that crypto is not going to work as it's sold to retail investors, and their voices grow louder everyday. Plenty of these critics, like myself, have experience working on crypto projects or have a background in SWE, distributed systems, and VC funded start ups. Working on crypto in 2016 is a much different ethical dilemma than working in the space in 2021, or even 2023. We simply know more, and right now we're watching the bodies rack up as the market experiences cascade failures.

Of course, if you 100% believe in a technology and think it has a future, then by all means keep working in that space. However, leaving is not impossible. There's such a need for senior devs that working on un-ethical projects isn't an unsurmountable goal.

Working in an industry that is considered shady can harm you in the long run. I have worked at one point in a gambling (So called "Gaming") company and 80% of the people there only move to other gambling companies (or even shadier places) because there is a bias against them in "regular" companies. I would also add that the longer they stay in the space the harder it is to leave it without a significant pay cut / position downgrade.

This is not only limited to developers but marketing, hr and product as well.

Fields that I would especially be wary of entering or spending time in are:

* Gambling: Including real gambling ,virtual points gambling and gatcha games

* Gambling disguised as financial services: Gamifying Forex/Binary options and other "investments"

* Predatory financial services: Like payday loans and high yield loans

* Areas that you need to explain why your specific company is not a scam: Crypto/NTF etc

* Actual scams: Like toolbars (you would be surprised but its still a thing) and anything that is just thinly veiled phishing

The same advice goes to entrepreneurs and not just employees. I would advise to stay away from VCs that have any significant amount of investment in these fields (>10% of portfolio).

This is a tough one.

I wouldn't worry that much about employability. If you're honest, hardworking, and love writing software then I don't see any issues there. I'm sure you've solved enough hard interesting problems that'll carry over to other industries. It's all about moving bits anyway. You'll even have a leg up if you have a better than average understanding of security.

You may be holding yourself back because it does take some time to ramp up in a new "vertical" (so to speak). Building new professional connections, etc. So like... maybe in an alternate universe you'd be working your way up the ladder at Apple or Google or whatever. That time invested does pay off and there's an opportunity cost there.

The tough one is the ethical question. Sometimes it's hard to tell if our disillusionment is internal or external. In other words, is it nagging you because you can see why the public is negative towards crypto or is it nagging you because you don't want to alienate yourself from the crowd?

If it helps, I've long held the strong belief that I should wake up in the morning guilt-free about my job. I need to feel excited about coming in to work and tackling the next big problem. I refuse to work for or with jerks. I refuse to work on products that aren't striving to make things better. I refuse to work on exploitative or manipulative products. I refuse to work for unfairly low pay. And all of that positive energy (great product, great people, great mission, good/great pay) make the dark/hard times easier to manage.

In the long run I feel like this philosophy has made me a happier and more successful engineer.

EDIT: Just to give you an idea of how I applied the above philosophy. I once quit a well paying job in the very first month because a senior engineer was an insanely venomous person and no one seemed interested in stopping them. I didn't make a big stink about it, just quietly moved on. The next job I found was amazing and I'm so glad that I did what I did. Yes it was scary.

> Anyone else in a similar position?

Yes.

I’ve worked in fintech and recently transitioned to cryptocurrencies (implementing cryptography). The backlash I received from my peers for even going into finance was very comparable.

> the constant backlash from the public is nagging me

I’ve lost friends, and I’ve resorted to say that I work with cryptography (which is 100% true, but omits the application).

It feels like you need to either double down on your beliefs or selectively inform people what you do for a living, to keep working with crypto.

It’s hard to be a conscientious cypherpunk when you see how average people will bend towards being cheated by stonks.

Since people’s judgement matters to you, consider working with something that you’re proud to tell people. That’s part of why I quit my first job in finance.

When friends of friends ask for investment advice, I don’t get back to them; it feels like selling people drugs. I don’t mind that they invest, but I spent years understanding the landscape, and I avoid most of what I see, including NFTs.

> will I be unemployable

Yes, your skills and personality will get you another job. Presumably, the technical level of your current job is the best you’ve done so far.

If you’re reading Hacker News, you’re over-exposed to the criticism. In reality, people don’t think that much about it.

I'm wondering if there is anyone working at GAMMA (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon) who also worries about the "constant backlash from the public" and if they feel bad about all the abuses their employers make, or if they just laugh all the way to the bank and get to develop a conscience when their companies face financial trouble.

Nah, who am I kidding? Who cares about the evil stuff done by BigTech? The money is so good it can buy them all the therapy they need.

Don’t worry about what the public thinks. Does your work align with your values? Do you feel it’s ethical and doesn’t take advantage of people?

The public morality once thought it was unethical to help humans escape slavery. It is not a good barometer, especially when the tide against crypto has turned strictly because it stopped making speculators and scammers cash.

I work in DeFi development as well and I can feel your pain.

Two things that I have to constantly keep in mind:

1. I have worked in stock markets for years before crypto and felt the same: I have been criticized in a similar fashion by laymen who don't necessarily have the proper understanding of what a stock market is and what value does it bring to the society. And yes, people who lost money were of course the most vocal.

2. Someone recently wrote: "99% of DeFi is scam. The rest is the future of finances". I strongly believe that idea, albeit I'd say the ratio is different.

---

One of the important things that is going to legitimize DeFi is deeper connection between DeFi protocols and real world use cases. One such example was for me when I fell on hard times and had to borrow on Aave to provide for the family. I had money available for me at a rate much lower than the bank, momentarily and with none of of the typical impossible soul-crunching KYC/AML bs. I recovered and paid back. I was happy. The lender was happy. Aave was happy. Stakers in Aave were happy. Absolute win-win all around. How is that not the future?

---

Oh, and don't work for scam projects.

I work for crypto industry too.

Welcome people's ideas, but pass them through your filter and do what you feel is right, not what people think.

If you believe crypto is good and love working for it, keep on.

If you don't believe so, and have a good alternative to switch, do it.

Just don't make a decision because the people around you tell you so.

Not only about crypto but pretty much applies everything in life.

Sometime in 2013 I was doubting to work with crypto. What made it clear for me, and this is the advice I still give friends today:

Ask yourself this. Regardless of wether crypto pricing goes up or down, regardless of wether there is major adoption or not. Will I get satisfaction from having built X? Will I look back after a decade and be grateful about my contribution?

So far, for me, the answer has been a no. I haven’t seen a use-case in crypto that excites me and is worth working on. The money would have been nice, but I’m in a luxury position where I’d rather spend my time working on useful things.

But again, that’s just my personal position and I accept that everyone is different.

I recently was in the same position. Went from curious to skeptical to disgusted by the whole crypto/web3 space.

The turning point was seeing my name on the company website, I was embarrassed for myself. Was an easy decision to quit.

I’m not in your position but can understand your concern. At the end of the day there is an enormous shortage of developers with good skills, and if you’ve spend your cruft in understanding the systems and all the insights that come with it, than they’d be rather easily transferred into others. Not knowing in what part of the system you’re involved, but given the presence on this forum I can only imagine you’re involved from a technical pov.

Back end engineers and data engineers are very much sought after and the distributed nature of tokens in general give raise to a large set of interesting problems, that in my opinion are some times better solved without involvement of the blockchain. But a lot of other concepts do still hold.

Seniority and being a good team member are also invaluable and hard to find, and something that doesn’t matter what technical skill you’re involved with.

So in short I wouldn’t think to much on the fact that you spend time in crypto, but rather spend the time thinking on what concepts and systems are transferrable to other domains and roles and have it be reflected in your resume and cv accordingly. Being a good team member is much more than technicals. You’re a human in a team with insights and knowledge.

> However, the constant backlash from the public is nagging me.

There isn't a constant backlash from the public - most people don't care, the ones that like it buy and the ones that don't write grumpy blog posts about it. The people who do care have split into the aye and nay camps and are arguing the situation out. The usual anti-capitalist types will hate it, but they hate everything financial.

Although any specific crypto is probably a mad idea that will eventually go bust, it is pretty clear at this point that the industry as a whole is here to stay. It has been more than a decade now, it is hard to come up with a scenario where all the money goes away.

Let me interject with a related issue I've seen in HN and its "Who's hiring" posts. I'm tired of having to waddle through the crypto/blockchain/web3 offers that are seemingly and permanently 6 months away from solving most of humanities issues. Most of them are grifters and they should not be rewarded with visibility in this forum.

Zoom and Netflix both lost 60-80% of their value in the last year and I don't see anyone declaring them dead. I don't work in crypto but I think there's a bit of a knee jerk reaction to seeing all the vaporware projects being wiped out (rightfully so). Consolidation and pruning of wasteful projects is good. If you feel like the work you're personally doing is positive, then don't worry about people dancing on the graves of LUNA and Celsius. ETH is still a legitimate technology with real use cases.

> will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

People that worked at Enron, Lehman, LTCM, et al all got new jobs quite easily. You'll be fine.

> the constant backlash from the public is nagging me

The public is mostly angry that they paid too much. They were speculative gamblers that bought into the bubble extremely late. This is no different than people who aggressively took loans to play landlord at the height of the housing bubble. I can empathize with people that buy idiotic scam tokens as well as people that end up holding a ton of debt as their houses get foreclosed but at the end of the day they, not you, are responsible for their poor decision making. Do you really think it is your fault that people out there mortgaged their house to do 100x leveraged longs on dog themed coins?

If the wheel of fortune had gone their way instead of those shorting them, they wouldn't show any sympathy for the shorts.

If you worked for Amazon, Facebook, Google, or a similar social media / adtech company, I think you’d be doing more real damage to society. The only difference is that these organizations have a better PR department.

Crypto has pluses and minuses and you should determine whether it’s a technology you believe in or not. I think basing your opinion of it on “the public” or (notoriously uninformed about crypto) HN opinion is just a bit mentally weak. Either believe in what you’re doing, or do something else. But don’t base your feelings on what the mob thinks.

Don’t worry about future employability, surely some people won’t hire ex-crypto guys. But no more than people won’t hire ex-amazon or ex-whatever.

Just make sure your company isn‘t scammy.

It looks like higher interest rates is going to burst a lot of bubbles. So maybe the industry will go back to its non-speculative roots soon.

That said, the environmental aspect is an issue that will linger.

Here is another angle to look at this ... if you have the stomach or appetite for risk. Stay there and document as much as possible from whatever angle that you can. Immerse yourself in literature about similar failed projects and scams (there are so many now from podcasts to books). Cover the problem domain from as many angles as you can (not just technology but ethics and who gets conned in society, the social dynamics around pump & dump). Write down and corroborate your findings with facts and pay _especially_ attention to time/dates (and who else knew about it).

What you should do will become visible by itself very soon. It'll be crystal clear what is the right thing to do. Contact a journalist? contact the feds? create an anonymous podcast? or talk to somebody who will air your story? write a book? all of the above?

It can be highly stressful and it might take another 2-3 years to gather all the evidence. But the characters in this game are always very shady, and if they haven't already broken some laws or crossed some ethical boundaries they will do so in the future.

> I am also worried about future employability. If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

It will make things harder, but the places you really want to work will recognize the truly difficult technical problems you are solving and look past the industry.

I worked with a couple of guys who used to work in porn -- some of the best engineers I ever worked with. It took a while for them to find a place that would move them past the recruiting screens, but once they did they ended up with great jobs that recognized their talent.

As long as you aren't running a scam you have nothing to worry about. Most people don't care about crypto one way or the other, all the noise comes from a small group of boosters and haters.

Live by your own values, I'd say.

Crypto is interesting and is not going away. Find a company that does have proper values. Not all of it is about selling coins.

I run a very small DLT operation where we don't even mention crypto or blockchain. We just talk about empowering local communities and restoring biodiversity. We don't associate with Cryptobro's and there's plenty of companies like us.

I guess we're just a little harder to find because we don't scream so hard :)

Don't give up, apply you talent to create the world you do want to be a part of. <3

For me, cryptocurrencies are comparable to a (for now) unregulated variant of the gambling industry. It’s probably a net negative for society but there’s still lots of supply and demand.

Speaking of net negative, enough people work for Big Tobacco, mass-market alcohol producers, fast-food giants, in pharmacological animal testing, for investment firms, loan lenders and weapon manufacturers. Arguments can be made for and against any part of these areas. They have benefits and drawbacks.

I believe you’ll have to make a value judgement for yourself, whether you’re fine with working on the supply side of things. Some people are, some are not.

Crypto isn’t dead. It’s like the dotcom bubble. The ideas were great at the time but not enough people had good internet or computers and it needed time to develop. Today a lot of the ideas are now what people thought they would be back then and more.

Crypto is the same thing. The world doesn’t suddenly switch to crypto on the same time scales needed for VC investment. Crypto would be best if it slowly grew which is actually more like what is happening if you normalizes the peaks and troughs.

If there are 1000 crypto currencies out there today, I expect 995 to be worth nothing in 10 years. I

If you genuinely see potential in the technology and ideology, I say stick to your convictions and remember that many opinions that appear to be widespread are just loud minorities. A lot of HN's anti-crypto stance is just an emotional reaction to the "crypto bros" phenomenon[0]. I also don't think employability will be an issue in the future, especially if you were not part of a scammy project.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857

It's no worse than sports, pokie or video game gambling and those are "accepted" in society.

The public has been casting lots forever[0]. Some people want to put their fate/outcome in some random system like dice, stocks or crypto. Those systems aren't truly random, but from the perspective of the participants it's close enough.

There is a theological topic on Cleromancy[1], the attempt to perceive gods will by casting lots (rolling dice or whatever) and interpreting the outcome as divine will. Many people do amazingly dangerous things like banging their mortgage into a crypto stock and rationalize the outcome for the winner as being "lucky" or the "universe" made it happen. These overlap with faith based patterns we've seen before.

Casinos and all that rig the odds so that the system of providing "random" outcomes can last forever as a corporation. But the human desire lasts forever, to put their fate in the hands of an external uncontrollable source. Crypto is just another method of casting lots for some members of the public.

Crypto is riding this wave of Roaring Twenties style excess we're living through at the moment. Get out by the end of the 2020s and you'll do okay.

[0]https://earlychurchhistory.org/beliefs-2/casting-lots-in-the...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy

I suggest you stand up for your industry. Finance in general and cryptocurrency in particular is much decried for being supposedly speculative/unproductive.

While anything involving money has a higher than normal proportion of scammers, it is also true that finance is generally a positive sum activity, that facilitates more productive coordination.

I recommend Nick Szabo's article on the origins of money:

https://fermatslibrary.com/s/shelling-out-the-origins-of-mon...

Szabo hypothesizes that the standardized collectibles seen in various early sites of homo sapien settlement dating from the paleolithic, like the ostrich-eggshell beads from the Kenya Rift Valley dated at 40,000 B.P and the mammoth ivory bead necklace from Sungir, Russai dated to 28,000 B.P, were in fact the earliest forms of money, and that the trade-based trustless coordination that this proto-money enabled raised the carrying capacity of the environment, and enabled humans to out-compete neanderthals.

Intriguingly, Szabo went on to become the first person to describe both the concept of a proof of work blockchain in Bitgold, which inspired Bitcoin, and smart contracts.

Not in the same position as you currently, but in a previous life I did work for a company which was pursuing NFTs. That bothered me but it wasn't the entirety of the business as they were also working on projects which I could see having some intrinsic value. That's what crypto businesses will have to demonstrate if they're going to survive the current turmoil and you could view that as an opportunity.

At the very least you're not working for Meta.

>but I also see true potential in the technology and ideology.

If you've been in crypto long enough to become opinionated about it and dissatisfied with it, then design something you think is the right way to do it, and pitch it to VCs. Some may agree with you, especially ones with a more long-term perspective on both the industry and their investment horizons, and who actually want to build enduring value rather than get rich quick.

>All the hate for crypto, even though much of it is uninformed

If you think it's uninformed, then either ignore it, or inform it (via twitter, blog, vlog, research paper, whatever).

>If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

Depends on what you spent those years doing and if the same skillset is valuable in other domains. Distributed systems architecture and engineering? UI/UX design? Stuff like that is easily transferrable and in demand elsewhere.

I work for a crypto company although I truly believe we are solving something here instead of bullshit which is 98% of the industry.

Sadly, investors aren't pouring money they are in tokens of goddesses.

If you think all your company is doing is scam, then by all means leave. Otherwise, stay if you want to.

I have not found many people who think what we are building is a scam once I explained and demoed.

I guess get tougher & disregard what people think or find a new job.

I’m curious that do individual devs of these crypto protocols really earn a lot like what many would have thought about them? By a lot, I mean like at least a million dollars a year that range of income. I mean, as we all know, in many of these protocols, not saying that your protocol is one of those though, the devs have almost full control over the protocol’s operations. It’s not really that “decentralised” as many thought of them.

I’m curious because many of these protocols, such as dex/farms or maybe tomb forks etc, claim they earn pretty well either through fees or what not from participants, and their tokenomics often have a good portion going to devs.

Also, if defi protocol devs really do make that kind of money and I was one of them, I wouldn’t be too worried about employability because I know I could easily retire within a few years! But that’s just me though.

Most of them here work in someway related to adtech and social media that is polarising communities across world, enabling fake news and allowing governments to snoop into private lives. But no one seems to care. At the end of day its just a job. Your objective must be to maximize your $/hr.

Also know that there are (silent?) supporters out there, not just haters.

I think you’re in the best possibile position, actually. You’re still learning valuable generic skills about the technology, you’re not just doing crypto, so I wouldn’t worry about your employability. Regarding the backlash, do you derive this feeling you have from Twitter? Because in that case I would just suggest to ignore everyone who’s either super invested in crypto and the absolutist critics: both sides are just good at polluting the discussion with either toxic positivity or superficial criticism. A good idea could also be to avoid Twitter altogether: it’s the most toxic social network I can think of, and it’s very good at convincing everyone that opinions there actually matter something in society.

>All the hate for crypto, even though much of it is uninformed, makes me question my decisions. I am also worried about future employability.

People keep working for Facebook and Google. And they tend to get other jobs when they want. So I wouldn't worry there.

What do you mean "uninformed"? We are getting news about next crypto scam almost every day and looking at inflated egos of crypto riches, mostly profited from those scams every week. And never a bit of good news. Even poor Nicaragua tried to circulate Bitcoin for good purpose and get busted for it. Pointless crypto kitties, silly NFTs, endless bugs in smart contracts to funnel tokens away by hackers, Ponzi schemes disguised as play-to-earn games, and so on. Tell me one good thing ever came from crypto?

I also work in this area. More in a trading context but still crypto only. I do not think that your current choice of employment will have any negative impact on your future. I would even argue that it would be rather positive. Not everybody is open for new ideas. Working on a Defi protocol shows your commitment to learning new stuff. I would still suggest you should switch your job, since you said it yourself, your are not really into it. IT will get difficult for you to defend yourself since you do not believe in the tech.

I work for AWS. I sometimes find that my values don't align with the company for which I work. Especially when it comes to the treatment of warehouse ('fulfillment center') workers and union busting.

But I also didn't agree with all the positions taken by previous employers dating back to when I was working at a grocery store after high school. That employer shipped most of our managers out to California as scabs to break a union strike for a time, and kept yo-yoing me between 25 and over 40 hours so they never had to classify me as a full-time employee.

Both inside and outside of tech, I found that you are very rarely going to work at a place which aligns completely with your values. Where you draw that line is ultimately up to you. I quit the grocery store over its bullshit. But at AWS, I'm ultimately helping companies safeguard the data of millions and millions of regular people.

Where you draw the line between your personal values and corporate reality is ultimately up to you. Do you think your work ultimately benefits the greater good? If not, I'd look at a different job.

Don't worry about not being employable in the future. Doing good work is doing good work. I have a very disreputable company on my resume (or, rather, I did). I got hired despite that. Did people ask me uncomfortable questions in interviews? Yeah. Did it stop me from being employable and getting a higher-paying job? No. And once I had more experience on my resume, I quietly dropped the company from my resume. I haven't found anyone who really cares what I did in 2013.

I have dedicated the majority of my professional career to crypto. I am deeply passionate about the industry and its potential to disrupt the global financial system, and IMO it has already in significant and profound ways. Whether you agree or not, it has certainly brought the discussion of fiat currencies, central banks, and the philosophy of monetary systems from the backwater of forgotten academics to a real debate in the public sphere.

I work in this industry because it combined my libertarian beliefs with my software skillset. I work with a lot of like-minded people, and the atmosphere is very freedom-oriented and open to debate compared to the average tech company.

The 2018-2020 bear market was a true test of die hard crypto employees. Bitcoin went to $3k as the tech industry boomed. So many talented people capitulated and went to FAANG pa$ture$ but those of us who stuck it out also got paid.

I can’t really give you advice other than, if the industry and / or company disagrees with your moral beliefs, you should find another line of work. Similarly I don’t work in adtech or social media because I find it distasteful. You can’t earn a paycheck that makes up for a dissonance in your sense of self.

I agree there are more scams than most in crypto, but I don’t work for scams. I greatly enjoy the technology and the freedom it enables. YMMV

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

I would say that there must be a wide range of possible activities in the crypto space. From well- to ill-intended. From crypto altruism over scientific crypto research to creating new crypto ponzi schemes on a weekly basis. Working on crypto does not automatically turn you into a scammer, but working on scams does.

> I also see true potential in the technology and ideology

A good reason to continue on your path.

Traditional banking has far more scams than crypto and is ripe for disintermediation. In fact, the average person spends almost a month a year to pay for the "right to use" traditional finance systems.

It's inevitable that defi (programmable money) will replace tradfi. Stay focused on creating value. Ignore the noise.

IMHO: As someone who thinks blockchains are cool but cryptobros aren't... ideological purity is for extremists and monks. Very few people in the world work for some "perfect" good; we all make tradeoffs moment-to-moment, day-to-day, year-to-year.

Whether you work in crypto or, say, defense or oil or animal testing or AI or finance or just plain ol' Big Tech, your labor output will contribute value to somebody in society (that's why they're paying you), while probably also hurting someone else in society in some small way (luring clueless investors, causing pollution, killing foreigners, exacerbating social conflicts, outcompeting small businesses... whatever). None of us are pure good or evil, and the majority of us live paycheck to paycheck under some corrupt government controlled by ruthless elites, no matter what particular -ism they call it. Your part is unlikely to be more than a cog in somebody else's big, unforgiving wheel.

You choose your battles, do what you can, give back when you can, and try not to cause unnecessary harm, while also taking care of yourself and the people, beings, places, and values you care about. That's already asking a lot of a species barely differentiated from chimps and suddenly given the power of electricity and machines.

As a developer (or some other techie), you have a pretty rare opportunity (in terms of human history, and even most other professions in today's world) of being able to float between verticals with relative ease. Most people can't switch careers without going back to school or going through years of training, but those of us in tech, we can keep mostly our same jobs and skills no matter which industry we choose work in.

So, whatever... self-reflection is a beautiful thing, and the whole point of it is to figure out where you stand relative to your values. Just like you wouldn't blindly follow speculative bubbles, you also don't need to let random online naysayers get to you. They don't get to judge you without knowing your story and situation, and the personal tradeoffs you've had to make in your life.

Consider yourself lucky that you're in a position where you're able to choose. If you decide to stay in crypto a bit longer to see if the technology (and ideology) matures, you can do whatever's in your power to make it less speculative. Write articles as an industry insider to educate people on the differences between exploitative speculation and peer-to-peer decentralized trust networks. Come up with democratic, open-source solutions to distribute the power among individuals, instead of replacing governments with unregulated centralized exchanges that hoard all the tokens, capital, etc. Don't let crypto become the next Wall Street, minus regulation -- and by that mean I mean big investors pooling individual savings and playing dumb games with them for personal gain. Do whatever the opposite of "privatize profits, socialize costs" would be in the crypto world (if such a thing were possible).

Crypto as a speculative financial tool might fail, but crypto the technology is here to stay, just one more chapter in our long book of accumulated human learnings, both good and bad.

If you eventually decide crypto isn't right for you, and you can afford to do so, take a few months off to evaluate your life and your options. Your values don't have to be a static thing, and neither do your passions. Explore both a bit before choosing your next path, and if you can settle on a profession or industry that would make you feel better... great, go for it! You can always reevaluate it again in a few years' time.

Tell your next employer why you entered crypto in the first place and why you left it. Honestly, they probably won't care... unless you switch to the nonprofit space, most employers' primary value is just profit, no matter what the feel-good whitewashing says on their website. And in the event they happen to ask, you'll be able to answer because you've done the self-reflection to be able to answer meaningfully, and you can tell them why you decided to take your skills elsewhere, that it wasn't a light decision, etc., etc.

It's OK to feel lost -- it's not a bad thing, it's an opportunity! Taking risks and learning from them is how we grow as people, right? And learning how to balance your needs against others' is how we strengthen communities, financial or online or otherwise.

Best of luck and enjoy the ride :)

You can always look at the opposite side (working in the regulatory/analytical side that does KYC/AML)

Yes, in a similar situation. I started a generic business in "real time analytics", but found that most of the demand was in Crypto so have been increasingly pulled into it.

I have always had a similar view to yourself, that a lot of the coins/tokens were silly, but DeFi and smart contracts were genuinely innovative and useful.

I've kind of held back from jumping in fully committed to Crypto because I'm very torn by the whole space and almost semi-reluctant to being associated with it.

I feel like with the recent declines in interest I should probably walk away at this moment and I find something I care about more.

I work in the crypto industry also. I've thought about leaving because (especially as market sentiments turn so negative), I feel like it could become a stain on my resume that hurts my employability if crypto becomes irrelevant in the future.

At the same time, it may become more relevant in the future (I'm thinking along the lines of 3-10 years out, probably not any time too soon with current market conditions). In that case, my skills may be incredibly valuable.

Until recently I've mainly been doing React+node+Typescript dev and system administration+AWS management anyway, all of which are skills that translate well to any other domain. Recently I've been doing some web3 stuff (which is completely new to me), so that's an area where I especially worry the skills I'm developing could become irrelevant.

But I don't think/hope they will. Even if they do, I have all the other skills to "fall back on" and as with any niche skill you develop, you have to consider its future value. For web3 development, I think if it has any value in the future, it will have a lot of value, so I'm happy with this time investment.

As for other considerations, I really like the company and people I work with. We provide financial services to other crypto companies (so we're essentially B2B). There is a ton of toxicity in the crypto industry unfortunately (Coinbase and Kraken are two prominent examples) so that's my biggest gripe with publicly identifying with "crypto values" (I'm pretty far from libertarian anyway). So my main concern really is people forming an opinion about how my values might align with their company values due to my work history.

But that could be said for working for any FAANG also (since they're all largely amoral, capitalistic, profit-drive companies)

I think despite what the sentiment is, there is real value in crypto/blockchain. I mean if the US Government turned the dollar into a digital currency, wouldn't the sentiment change? Wouldn't DeFi be better with regulation? All the benefits of cryptocurrency/smart contracts/DeFi are real. The problem is there is no regulation. Without regulations most people are going to optimize for self interest. That is really overshadowing the potential. It will eventually change for the better.

Maybe this will help change your mind or at least give you a better alternative within the field: http://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/

But if it doesn't change your mind and you don't believe in this industry you should find another job, somewhere which aligns with your values. I don't believe nutral is good enough.

Nobody should ever feel guilty for other people's crimes, but more importantly - what is a crypto rug compared to the founding of a bank?

Crypto can't fail, the question is just what kind of crypto there will be, will there be a centralized corpo/state dystopia paired with surveillance or can we recreate everything in a robust, decentralized and anonymous way to bring forth an unprecenentend social mobility for all?

"whyamibad2" -- username checks out /jk

seriously tho, you can focus on your skills and carefully re-label them such that your future job prospects aren't affected. crypto became a scam because that was the only way to kill crypto and the Bitcoin's movement. the technology will probably be around in new forms sometime next decade, but the stigma will make it hard to find jobs until then.

The company you work for doesn't want to use the "technology and ideology" for anything other than own profit. It's why they are a company. If you don't like working for them but you like the tech, find a job in another field and just experiment with the tech on your own time. Or launch a startup that you feel it's game changing with that technology.

The crypto dent is on your resume now.

At this point, you may as well stick around and make a dent in the crypto world.

Find a way to have an impact. Write blog posts. Get a serious project delivery under your belt.

As to what you (or other people) think about your resume: don't be so hard on yourself. You made this choice for a decent reason. Follow your intuition and try to have fun / have an impact somewhere.

You won't get a balanced answer here: HN is an echo chamber full of ignorance and virtue signalling when it comes to Crypto.

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

There will be companies that will refuse to hire you if you've been working in an industry they considered to be scammy. But those compares are a few and far between.

Crypto is all smoke and mirrors set out to deceive people to spend their money and lose the lot. Sure there will be winners but that mostly isn't you. It's fool's gold. Now, the people who enable this. Well you just owned up to being part of the problem.

Just keep building, bear market are the best time to bake in experience points that make you the most highly compensatable in bull markets

There are people around you that kept building in the last 3 year crypto bear market

There are no insights that appeared since then that werent the same then

IMHO crypto space is good because the banking sector finally sees they have some competition. And crypto space is global, not tied to country banking sector lobbying (pardon, regulation :P). So, for example, in my country (and I believe many others as well), we have many banks. Still, you can't see competition between them - they usually charge the same/similar fees and give you a similar package. None of them will provide you with some specific derivatives (e.g., currency rate hedging) unless you are a multi-million player, etc.

Is there a scam in the crypto market? Sure, just like it was rampant in the Forex market many years ago. But, you still can find fair players and need to know where to look for them.

PS: I believe this backslash mostly comes from people competing against the crypto market in some way. I could see on Twitter that the loudest are those who are heavily invested in (or will try to sell you at some point) gold, oil, stock market, etc.

On the black stain on the CV: the best time to quit cryptocurrency companies is before you start. The second best time is today.

It's just a year or so. Two years will look worse. Three years and you'll start looking like a fraudster.

Never too late to minimize the damage.

There are bad actors in any industry. If the last two years have taught me anything is that centralised government is the next target to free society from tyranny, and Bitcoin is a part of that. Make cash while you can.

I believe you’re traditionally supposed to wipe your tears with a wad of cash. Same goes for other ”problematic” industries e.g. gambling, weapons, loan sharking. The pay is well above market average usually

If you're worried, just look for a better job you'll also like. No reason you need to stick around in crypto. You can invest in it in other ways than your day job if you really believe in it.

If bitcoin does crash and burn a lot of money with it, and is seen as the industry of scams and empty promises, then you may be tainted, sure.

Look for other jobs. It can’t hurt. And keep your skills and any side projects diverse too. Should you need to get out of the industry you can point at those unrelated projects and skills.

If your skillset is in demand then other companies should jump at you regardless. If you’ve done nothing but focus on Etherum and Solidarity for the last few years then I guess you’ll suffer.

I wouldn’t worry about becoming unemployable, while I deem crypto a predatory business, you haven’t worked for the Gestapo and I wouldn’t hold it against you. But, given the whole thing may collapse anytime, I’d sharpen my interview skills so that I can jump ship if anything bad happens.

Check out NKN coin and new kind of network inspired by Wolfram cellular automata. The protocol is truly P2P and could change things to a workable state. Kudos for your skepticism. The world really needs a crypto to work to achieve freedom but current incarnations are nothing but scams.

Quit.

I’d get out while you can.

It rather sounds like you might want to change your job in crypto. E.g. go working for an infrastructure protocol if you believe in the tech.

As for the rest. Don't worry about future employability and there is as much shady stuff going on in tradfi as in crypto.

Quit. It’s a scam.

How is it uninformed?

Don't?

Amusing to watch hackernews wake up and smell the pancakes they've been setting on fire these last two years.

It's like allowing / disallowing casino gambling.

"people like it!"

"it's verifyibly awful for you!"

"but it's fuuuuuun."

"it's ruining the planet."

"Don't be an asshole! Apes!"

...

"aaaaand we didn't make it"