The Crypto Industry Is Dying, That Is A Good | Crypto News
Anthony Pompliano says most of the crypto industry is already useless and that the market has not absolutely admitted it yet. In a May 6 video posted on X, the Bitcoin investor and commentator argued that the sector’s long tail of unused chains, illiquid tokens and speculative initiatives is being cleared out as the elements with real utility merge into the broader financial system.
Pompliano said the response to his initial post on X was quick and hostile. He had written that “most of the crypto industry is dead and it’s never coming back,” a message he said adopted him through the Consensus convention in Miami.
“I have been called an idiot, I’ve been told I was wrong, and I must have been asked over 50 times about the tweet while I was at the Consensus Crypto Conference yesterday down in Miami,” Pompliano said. “But after spending the day at the conference, I’m more convinced today than I was yesterday. Most of the crypto industry is dead and it is never coming back.”
Crypto Ghost Chains And Zombie Coins
Pompliano’s core argument rests on what he sees as a damaged business cycle inside crypto. In conventional industries, failed firms are shut down, capital is redeployed and expertise strikes toward stronger concepts. In crypto, he said, that clearing mechanism hardly ever works because blockchains can keep operating with minimal participation and tokens can linger far above zero even after liquidity and relevance have evaporated.
He described the outcome as an ecosystem crammed with “ghost chains” and “zombie coins.” Ghost chains are networks that stay technically operational but have little significant exercise. Zombie cash are tokens whose communities or markets have collapsed, while remaining holders are often unable to exit without taking extreme losses.
“There are millions of coins and there are thousands of blockchains,” Pompliano said. “Just those two things alone would make my original claim that most of the crypto industry is dead accurate. Because you have to ask yourself: does anyone actually believe that millions of crypto coins are going to thrive in the future?”
Pompliano said he requested that query from the stage at Consensus and “literally zero people raised their hand.”
Beyond unused networks and useless tokens, Pompliano argued that crypto has misplaced a lot of the ideological conviction that once outlined its early base. The industry, in his view, has shifted from “hardcore missionaries” who prioritized the success of Bitcoin and the underlying technology toward “mercenaries” who chase whichever commerce presents the most important financial reward.
That shift, he said, is seen in short-lived meme tokens, rip-off cash, market manipulation, rising yield-farming incentives and product launches designed more for consideration than utility. Pompliano’s criticism was not aimed at hypothesis alone, but at an industry tradition he believes has turn out to be indifferent from fixing real consumer issues.
“If you have mercenaries outnumbering the missionaries, the broader crypto industry is now run by people who don’t understand or believe in the original vision for the industry,” he said. “As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And I think that’s what’s happening across the industry.”
Wall Street Is Absorbing Crypto
Pompliano also pushed back against what he called the “we hate investors class,” pointing to online criticism of enterprise capital, large financial establishments and regulation. He argued that enterprise corporations funded a lot of the early infrastructure that allowed customers to buy, store and ship Bitcoin, while major establishments are now turning into the dominant distribution layer for crypto publicity.
Morgan Stanley’s plan to launch Bitcoin trading through E-Trade was his central instance. Pompliano famous that E-Trade has 8.6 million purchasers and said Morgan Stanley intends to offer Bitcoin trading with decrease charges than Coinbase and Charles Schwab, utilizing ZeroHash as infrastructure. He framed that as a major “narrative violation” for crypto-native corporations.
At the same time, Pompliano said crypto-native firms are transferring in the alternative direction by including equities, prediction markets, choices, commodities and other non-crypto merchandise. The distinction between crypto platforms and conventional brokerages is turning into less clear.
That convergence also formed his studying of Michael Saylor’s current feedback that Strategy might promote Bitcoin or Bitcoin derivatives to fund most well-liked dividends if doing so served the company’s pursuits. Pompliano said such an concept would have been handled as “blasphemy” years in the past, but now appears to be like more like customary capital allocation inside a financialized Bitcoin business.
The crypto industry is dying.
That is a good factor.
The resilient and worthwhile points of the industry need to compete on the most important stage, not keep pigeon-holed in a boutique industry with declining capital and expertise. pic.twitter.com/TlVJAG6zFz
— Anthony Pompliano (@APompliano) May 6, 2026
Crypto Becomes Finance
Pompliano said he still sees major worth accruing to 4 areas: Bitcoin, stablecoins, infrastructure and tokenization. His thesis just isn’t that all crypto disappears, but that the speculative long tail does while the useful elements are absorbed into mainstream finance.
“We do not need more carnivals. We do not need more nonsense,” he said, referring to a “Crypto Carnival” sales space he noticed at Consensus. “We are in a competition with the legacy financial firms that have a lot of money and very smart people. We need more people focused on building real things for real problems.”
At press time, the overall crypto market cap stood at $2.65 trillion.
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