“Number Go Up” Culture Is Killing Crypto’s Cypherpunk Dream, Wintermute CEO Warns

TLDR:

• Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy says crypto is now driven by a “number go up” mindset over cypherpunk values.
  
• Gaevoy argues stablecoins reinforce U.S. dollar dominance rather than building a truly decentralized financial system.
  
• Despite Ethereum’s $120B+ in TVL, Gaevoy says most of it is “stuck money” with little real-world application use.
  
• Gaevoy warns that deeper TradFi integration could permanently erase the original cypherpunk dream of decentralized finance.

Cypherpunk ideals once drove the creation of Bitcoin and decentralized finance. However, Wintermute founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy believes the industry has moved far from those origins.

Speaking on Fortune’s Crypto Playbook podcast, Gaevoy argued that crypto has been consumed by a “number go up” mindset.

He also raised concerns about stablecoins reinforcing dollar dominance and the limited real-world adoption of decentralized applications, even as blockchain valuations remain high.

The Shift Away From Decentralization

Gaevoy expressed concern about how the crypto industry has repositioned itself over recent years. Rather than building systems that operate outside traditional finance, many projects now align closely with Wall Street structures.

This shift, he said, runs counter to Bitcoin’s founding philosophy as a libertarian, government-independent currency.

Earlier in February, Gaevoy shared his views in a viral thread on X. He argued that despite pro-blockchain government sentiment and institutional adoption, the core mission of crypto has been overshadowed.

The industry, in his view, is now driven more by price speculation than by meaningful technological purpose.

Stablecoins have become one of the most widely used products in crypto. However, Gaevoy pointed out that their growth comes with a contradiction.

“We were supposed to build something parallel to the dollar,” he said on the podcast, “but now we are actually imposing the dollar on the rest of the world.” That framing challenges the widely held view that stablecoin expansion equals genuine crypto progress.

For Gaevoy, this represents a fundamental conflict in values. The industry set out to create an alternative financial system, but has instead become a channel for extending existing monetary dominance. Rather than replacing the dollar-based order, crypto has largely reinforced it.

Limited Adoption Despite High Valuations

The debate between Ethereum and Solana often dominates crypto conversations. Gaevoy, however, believes this misses a larger issue: neither blockchain has achieved genuine decentralized application adoption.

Despite Ethereum holding over $120 billion in total value locked, according to CoinMarketCap, Gaevoy described much of it plainly. “It’s stuck money,” he said, pushing back against the idea that high TVL figures reflect real economic activity.

Corporate pilots placing bonds or cash markets on blockchains have attracted significant media attention. Yet Gaevoy cautioned against reading too much into them.

“People quite overestimate those pilots by corporations to put some bonds on blockchains or some cash markets on blockchains,” he said. These efforts, he added, remain a tiny fraction of what happens in traditional finance daily.

Wintermute itself works across centralized and decentralized exchanges rather than committing to one direction. This positions the firm to operate at multiple levels of integration with traditional finance.

Still, Gaevoy maintains that the ideal future involves returning to cypherpunk principles rather than a deeper merger with Wall Street.

“Everyone is cheering for this merger with TradFi,” Gaevoy said. “But nobody understands that it will basically just cancel out the cypherpunk dream altogether.”

He remains confident the tide will turn. “My bet is this pendulum will swing back again when people realize there is a benefit to this crazy blockchain stuff, and it’s not just memecoins,” he added.