A Collective Confession of the Three Longest-Lasting Crypto OGs – FACE Podcast

[face(east), editor=Block Media Choi Dong-nyuk Editor] The conclusion drawn by three crypto veterans after gathering in the studio for over an hour is roughly as follows. The money they spent the most time on in crypto is now in KOSPI, the Toss app was shockingly good, and the moment they saw Micron's operating profit margin at 80%, they realized they had been living in a Galapagos. However, this confession does not mean they are leaving crypto. It is more of a commitment to approach this space with a new perspective different from the existing one.

The first episode of the FACE podcast begins with the title "What Will Happen to Coins in the Future?" but what is actually heard is closer to a collective confession of crypto believers.

Kim Nam-woong (Steve), co-founder of blockchain research firm Populous, Lim Jong-kyu (Alex), who oversees LayerZero's Asia business, and YouTuber Park Joo-hyuk. The three, who are said to like and respect each other in the industry, dig their own graves in front of the microphone. The metaphor they most frequently use to explain their market is, ironically, the South Korean national football team.

The reason the three turned on the microphone is not to complain about the market. It is closer to creating something that can help this space move in the right direction while being enjoyable, based on the experiences and networks they have built by directly experiencing the rise and fall of this industry in their respective fields. Thus, their first conversation became a place where affectionate people touch on their own pain points in the market.

Why is Crypto Like the National Football Team?

The comparison of crypto to the Hong Myung-bo team is not mere mockery but a critique of methodology. In the 15th minute of the second half, when the Korean national team is struggling, a statistic appears on the scoreboard stating, "Korea has scored the most goals in the 20-30 minutes of the second half." This is a way of creating hope through a baseless correlation. The logic of "this is why it will rise" in crypto is exactly the same.

"When you look at coins, the reasons given for why they will rise are really nonsensical."

They hold onto scenarios rather than indicators. One participant summarizes the state of his assets like this.

"It feels like Bitcoin and my portfolio have been dying for the 50th consecutive time this year."

So now, no one talks about coins on their channel. Everyone only discusses semiconductors and memory. There’s nothing else to look at.

The Comfort of Toss, Ultimately Users Go for Easy Infrastructure

The most painful confession comes from here. Two out of the three started investing in domestic stocks for the first time this year.

The reason they had postponed stock investment until now was logical in its own way. They believed that the friction costs, such as Kiwoom's Hero's Y2K-style UI and T+3 (the process that takes three business days to cash out after selling), offset the opportunity costs of stock investment. However, that entry barrier crumbles in front of Toss. A phrase from someone who felt a sense of pride while working in the crypto ecosystem is symbolic.

"Toss is better than Upbit."

This is not just a matter of pride; it signals where funds, interest, and technology are flowing. They take it a step further. If the infrastructure is this good, they believe that tokenization will accelerate on top of it. This is a bet from someone who sees the ins and outs as a livelihood.

When Ansem (a famous crypto trader with over a million followers) creates a value of over $100 million by shilling meme coins, but there’s no interest at all, another participant’s summary directed at Joo-hyuk is striking.

"You are vividly hearing why Joo-hyuk hasn’t made money all this time."

The Reality Check from Micron and the Pricing Logic of Two Markets

The core of their conversation lies here. The reason Micron's earnings call was a reality check comes from the fact that the pricing mechanisms of the two markets (stocks and digital assets) are entirely different.

In stocks, generating operating profit is a given, and what moves the price is the slope of that profit margin. As long as 80% is maintained, it is considered bad news, and the slope must become steeper for it to be good news. This means that the market prices the second derivative of profit, i.e., acceleration.

Crypto has no such discipline. A project can raise $100 million (about 150 billion won) and still be traded with daily sales of $4 (about 6,000 won).

"In crypto, as long as there’s operating profit, it’s a complete mega bull."

The two markets are not just different games with volatility; their fundamental principles of pricing are different. The subsequent debate on capital circulation was the most intricate part. One person believes Bitcoin will not rise due to good news. Instead, he sees money circulating.

Funds are overly concentrated in AI semiconductors, and since maintaining an 80% operating profit margin is difficult, expectations are gradually declining (from 80 to 70, then 60). Then profit-taking occurs, and if some bad news related to AI breaks out, the theme cools down. At that point, Bitcoin's value storage function operates again, the U.S. releases money, and if the four-year cycle overlaps, it will eventually rise.

Immediately, a counterargument arises. Would you buy a company with an annual operating profit of 300 trillion and an 80% profit margin while looking at a company with daily sales of $4?

"Such companies should disappear."

Even if one accepts the premise of money circulating, the question is whether capital that has tasted performance has any reason to flow back into assets without performance. This counterargument becomes the conclusion of the podcast. After all, only a few projects that survive and make money are visible and tangible.

"It’s finally time to buy something tangible."

Can AI and Crypto Make Sense Together?

Recently, the area attracting attention in the industry is the combination of AI and blockchain. The three dissect the narrative of AI and crypto coldly. Since privacy has already been somewhat answered with coins like Zcash (ZEC, a privacy-focused coin that hides transaction history), they start from the premise that this is not a decisive breakthrough.

Many projects claiming to combine AI and crypto often turn out to be cleverly packaged API aggregation (reselling external AI services) rather than inference (where AI directly performs reasoning and computation), and there are cases where the internal ecosystem itself doesn’t make sense. Therefore, for this to really take off, it has to be one of two things: either the founder creates it and dies to achieve complete decentralized neutrality, or it remains as a speculative service attached somewhere.

"For AI and crypto to combine and take off, someone has to create it and then die."

However, there is one slice that is clearly proven. For agents to settle, the unit must be smaller than a cent, the frequency must be high, and it must operate even in situations where identity verification (KYC) is not done. This is a problem that cannot be solved with existing fiat currency rails, and thus stablecoins are structurally necessary.

Although the future promised by crypto may be extremely limited, their stance is clear.

"Let’s first prove that something is actually working, even if it’s just a little."

As countries export frontier models and now peripheral countries have no choice but to rely on open-source AI, there is also an expansion logic that crypto could provide incentives to that open-source. However, the counter-question of "Where do you get good GPUs?" quickly puts the brakes on that.

Good GPUs are all taken by hyperscalers (large cloud and data center operators), and people like us are left with leftover quantities or expensive VPS (virtual private servers for rent). Decentralized AI training is still a romantic notion.

What SpaceX Taught Us: "Structure is Not a Crime"

The three make an important distinction regarding the low float (the actual amount circulating in the market is small) and high FDV (the market capitalization reflecting the total amount to be released in the future) structure of SpaceX's IPO. This structure is the very game that crypto has always played.

The gap between FDV and actual circulating supply, which leads to pump and dump (artificially inflating and then selling), is not a moral flaw unique to crypto but a structural result of the capital market.

"We have always played this game."

However, there is a decisive difference. SpaceX is a company that actually creates demand. Unlike tokens that only generate future value (FDV), whether it generates real demand is the criterion that distinguishes substantial assets from shells. This distinction, that just because the structure is the same does not mean the fate is the same, is an extension of the earlier argument about "tangible subjects."

Bitcoin Evangelist, Michael Saylor, and the Three-Body Problem of Strategy

Now comes the less hopeful discussion. Citing a famous trader's tweet, the three read Saylor's capital structure as a three-body problem (a state where three elements continuously shake each other, resulting in no stable answer).

"The market seems to be telling Saylor that he cannot have all three: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Stretch (STRC), and BTC."

This is because they destabilize each other. The observed mechanism supports this diagnosis. As soon as the announcement of Strategy came out, bots bought it thinking it was good news, but upon reading it, they found it stated that Bitcoin would be sold to buy STRC. As a result, Bitcoin fell while STRC rose.

The weight of the conclusion lies here. Saylor has now become not the evangelist of Bitcoin but the CEO managing the capital structure of Strategy, and his incentives have already diverged from those of BTC holders.

The Belief That Bitcoin Must Be Number One Was My Religion

Here, the temperature among the three diverges, and the argument becomes clearer. Alex is optimistic about the technology of blockchain but draws the line at whether it connects to Bitcoin's price. In response, Steve breaks his own premise.

"The belief that Bitcoin must always be number one in market cap, that was my religion."

This is the realization that it is an unverified faith created by the experience that the market has always been like this. However, if cash flow protocols like hyperliquid (decentralized derivatives exchanges that generate actual commission revenue) emerge, crypto can also be reassessed based on performance, and at that moment, the market cap rankings assigned by faith will collapse.

There is also a discussion about the need to diagnose risks related to quantum computers and block rewards (the structure where the new coin rewards given to miners decrease over time). The areas of stablecoins, tokenization, and RWA (real-world assets tokenized like real estate and bonds) may not belong to Bitcoin's domain. The core is that the future where blockchain technology grows and the future where BTC wins are different bets.

Freedom, Control, and Reset

The latter part transitions to the duality of stablecoins. It starts from the conspiracy theory that world governments are trying to manipulate the public with this technology, but the argument is straightforward.

Trump said he wouldn’t do CBDCs, but he is unpredictable, so the state can achieve the same control through stablecoins instead of CBDCs. Just like the Canadian trucker case (when the government froze the accounts and donations of participants in protests against government policies in 2022), a rail that emerged while pursuing freedom becomes a controlled rail the moment the state manages it. All technologies have dualities. Then their conversation flows into a more fundamental cynicism.

"The won we use is also a ponzi, and so is the dollar."

In a world where the top 10% occupy more than half of the stock market, there is a logic that reset is necessary, a logic of people living in the era of pitchforks. Their arguments converge into one. Crypto is now being pulled up over the discipline of performance that stocks are based on, and only projects that can be proven will survive.

Interestingly, the people who most painfully acknowledge this are the ones who have lasted the longest in this space. Even while saying they have moved their money to KOSPI, they ultimately sit back in front of the microphone again, closing the first episode with, "I will show you the spiciness of a small pepper."

What will happen to coins in the future cannot be known from this one hour. However, at the threshold where the narrative era of coins transitions to an era of performance, it is rare to hear so honestly what logic the people remaining in this space are holding on to.

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