Wintermute Founder: Only One Path Left for Cryptocurrency, Escape the "Empire"

Original Title: Golden Path (p1)

Original Author: EvgenyGaevoy, Founder of Wintermute

Original Compilation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

I've been thinking about this article for a long time. My views on whether cypherpunks can succeed, whether libertarianism can succeed, and whether cryptocurrency is viable have been constantly changing.

What follows are my recent thoughts on the philosophical position of cryptocurrency. This is more of a manifesto, explaining "why we are really here."

The Golden Path

For a long time, *Dune* was one of my top three books. That might have changed in recent years (for example, the *Culture* series ranks higher now), but it still holds a special place in my heart, as it shaped my thinking around the age of twenty.

People generally focus on the first three books of the series, but for me, it's the fourth book, *God Emperor of Dune*, that has stayed with me and genuinely influenced my views on progress, the value of diversity, and what the world should be like. The core idea of the series up to that point is that the only way for humanity to survive is through diversification. The "Golden Path" is a millennia-spanning plan that first forcibly imposes a stable yoke on humanity, and when that yoke disappears, humanity will inherently despise this stability and any form of centralization. As the book puts it, it aims to

"give humanity a lesson carved into their bones: protected ease is indistinguishable from total death, no matter how long it's delayed."

We are inherently drawn to stability, to organizing things, to fighting chaos and disorder. We inherently like to build empires, whether they are nations or corporations. We also know that all empires fall, all corporations die, but we keep building them, each time bigger and stronger. But the bigger we build, the more devastating the collapse. Even more terrifying is that this ultimate empire-building could drag all of humanity into extinction, either because it's too centralized to withstand external shocks, or because it "evolves" internally to abandon its existence as a society. So history repeats this cycle: from chaos to self-organization, to empire, to collapse. The most important lesson I learned from the "Golden Path" is: during the integration phase, we should embrace diversity and reject empire, no matter how tempting the stability (and promised prosperity) it offers.

In today's nations, there is too much "protected ease." In today's corporate/financial machines, there is also too much "protected ease." I believe both are slowly pushing us towards an inevitable collapse. To be clear, this is not anti-capitalism or anti-progress. On the contrary, there is less and less capitalism in this system, and more of a bad, unambitious statism. In summary, the potential future monsters are these:

· Anarcho-capitalism: Corporations win, governments lose. Whether it's the world of Tessier-Ashpool, CosaNostra Pizza Inc, or Weyland-Yutani, life is tough for everyone except the big cogs in the machine.

· Nationalism: Nation-states control everything, carving up the world. It's unclear whether it ends up like *1984* or slightly better.

· Fascism: Corporations and governments collude. This is the Galactic Empire from *Star Wars*—rebellion is almost inevitable. Which country might go down this path.

What's on the other side? What doesn't give you "protected ease" but instead forces you to treat personal sovereignty and independence as top priorities? What strives to leap beyond national borders, completely ignoring those closed financial systems? What treats "insecurity" as a feature, not a bug? Good question, that word is cryptocurrency.

The Road Ahead

I've been in this "industry" for almost 9 years, and I've never felt the atmosphere so lost, with nothing to look forward to. On the surface, we seem to have gotten most of what we wanted: "institutional adoption" has happened, and the technology is being used. But something feels missing, not just about the price, but the "soul" is gone, the feeling of "what are we really doing" is gone. And the outside world is moving forward, now with a hotter new thing ("AI"). We are completely lost.

Of course, not everyone feels this way. Some think the rise of stablecoins is a win. Some are celebrating decentralized perpetual contract platforms defeating the "dinosaurs" of traditional and centralized finance. Others want to build their own empires at the intersection of DeFi and traditional finance. We're seeing "enterprise chains" pop up again, enterprise blockchain is "great" again. So yes, some are excited, but I'm not, even though Wintermute could make a lot of money by integrating with traditional finance.

I'm not excited because I see several different paths ahead, only one of which is both viable and worth taking:

Traditional finance absorbs cryptocurrency. Stablecoins become widespread, KYC'd enterprise chains, KYC'd "decentralized exchanges." The financial machine runs faster, with fewer intermediaries. Bitcoin becomes digital gold, mostly held in sovereign government, corporate treasuries, and ETFs. Or perhaps a global CBDC rollout, with our (financial) privacy completely controlled. The technology is indeed impressive, but we lose utterly and completely, isn't that obvious? Probability: Highest

Governments surrender to blockchain, everything runs on permissionless ledgers, KYC/AML regimes are sidelined. Taxes on crypto are only paid when converting to fiat, token market cap in the trillions. A free, glorious world. Also a purely imaginary world, we win (but in a dream). Probability: Lowest

Uncomfortable coexistence. We build something parallel and completely independent from the existing system. As an individual, you can exist in both. Governments can't touch it because it's designed to be isolated. We win, and we win honorably. Probability: Depends entirely on us

I hope you sense that I have zero interest in Option 1. It just makes the existing machine (whichever of the three big monsters ultimately wins) run more smoothly.

I know some think Option 2 is possible, but that's pure fantasy. Governments will not give up sovereignty, just as corporations will not voluntarily give up monopolies. Casinos won't just open freely on Solana. The CFTC won't turn a blind eye to Hyperliquid being KYC-less and unregulated. Need I remind you? Which centralized stablecoin issuer can't freeze assets with a court order? For this to happen, the entire socio-economy would have to collapse. I have three kids to feed and over a hundred people to manage; I'm not hoping for that.

That leaves only Option 3. You can call it the metaverse, network states, DAOs, or cultural tribes. What they have in common is independent existence, often in conflict with, or even opposition to, the political and financial systems of the "real world."

The Matrix

Our biggest problem is that many have never truly "learned this lesson to the bone." Especially those of us in Western countries, who have gradually gotten used to progress and convenience, never experiencing what it's like to lack sovereignty. Ironically, 2022 to 2024 gave us the most vivid taste: on one side, the regulatory onslaught from the SEC and CFTC; on the other, centralized entities (FTX/Alameda + venture capital) almost buying up half of crypto. The result? The lesson we learned was completely backwards. Instead of doubling down on fighting for freedom, we thought we could win just by putting the right people in the right places.

At the same time, we've complained for years about poor user experience in crypto, Bitcoin not being a convenient payment tool (it really isn't), endless hacks, etc. What if we're all wrong? What if these inconveniences are precisely the price we must pay for sovereignty, a culture we should actively embrace? I'm not saying we should think MetaMask is the pinnacle of innovation. Nor that we all have to engrave seed phrases on metal plates. I'm saying the user experience we should strive to optimize is not for the 50% of the world that doesn't need it, but for the 50% that truly needs sovereignty—whether it's people in developing countries watching democracy erode and being completely controlled by governments, or those in developed countries that are increasingly resembling China and Russia with anti-privacy laws (e.g., Europe and the UK).

Our goal shouldn't be to fight "regulation" or "government." Our goal should be to create something they simply cannot control. The key is not relying on choke points: fiat on/off ramps, app stores, DNS resolution, centralized sequencers, social media platforms, and of course, centralized stablecoins (which can be frozen at will). What we build shouldn't be something that can be shut down by a court order or a corporate bureaucrat flipping a switch. Tax authorities shouldn't be eyeing our non-compliant tokens (unless we convert to fiat). Ultimately, it boils down to one sentence: we must create a place where ordinary people can live without asking anyone for permission.

Specifically:

• Embrace permissionless, sovereign protocols, not black-box off-chain solutions.
• DAOs were originally right; I'm referring precisely to those that didn't work, the ones completely controlled by centralized entities putting on a fake governance show. We never truly built proper communities, just thought about incentivizing engagement farming.
• Learn to either not rely on centralized things, or be able to switch immediately if an external one gets choked. This includes infrastructure (cloud, LLMs), social coordination tools, and of course, stablecoins.
• Make algorithmic stablecoins great again; our mistake was being too obsessed with Ponzi models. DAI and UST themselves had the right idea; the mistake was adding USDC to DAI and piling completely unsustainable yields onto UST. It's perfectly normal that DAI, backed only by ETH, can't match Tether's scale—you need to build a parallel economy first, which we never truly attempted. Even better—we transact directly with each other in crypto, though that step might be premature.
• Privacy must be protectable. Use whatever tools, just get it done.

The Scattering

The end of *God Emperor of Dune* is "The Scattering"—the God-Emperor dies, and humanity scatters into the void. After 2022, we should have scattered too, should have remembered the lesson, but it's not too late.

We (do) not always get to choose where in the world we are. Some are trapped in countries with little means to leave; others are bound by responsibilities they've taken on. My more pessimistic prediction is that in the coming years, we will only have more reasons to want to escape. That big monster will grow larger, suppressing more and more. Escaping completely into a "better" parallel crypto world is impossible now, even if it existed. But at least we can (re)start building something for future people to escape to, while allowing the real world and the crypto world to coexist.

The tools that can be used to escape are the only things worth building. When crypto is no longer trendy (it will happen), it should still be usable, unaffected by the outside world. More importantly, it should give meaning to what we do and build.

Most of us will still choose to coexist with the empire. Because of responsibilities, comfort, money, or other pursuits, all understandable, no problem. The remaining small group will create the exits and retrieve what we've lost.

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