On this week’s episode of The CoinRock Show, the price charts weren’t the main attraction — the crisis of meaning in crypto was. As altcoins flickered in and out of relevance and yet another meme coin season just behind us, host Matthias Mazur sat down with Byron Gilliam, a former equities trader and current Blockworks writer, to dissect the philosophical rot beneath the bull runs and liquidity pumps.
What followed was part therapy session, part roast, and part wake-up call — a brutally honest look at crypto’s evolving identity and its unspoken contradictions.
“I’m not really sure how much of finance we’ve reinvented like it’s been slightly, you know. It’s been a little bit underwhelming in terms of what you know what the industry has actually created,” Byron said in one of the episode’s early gut-punches.
But before diving into deep talks and market absurdities, Byron shared with viewers and industry participants his crypto origin story. He admitted his origin story was boring. No rabbit hole moment. No whitepaper epiphany. Just a former Wall Street professional seeing a great opportunity for a career switch — and choosing to follow the trail.
“I’ve been doing that for about 4 years. Now. How I got into it my origin story is incredibly boring. I need to make up a newer one.”
That story — grounded, rational, and a bit anticlimactic — ended up setting the tone for a broader, introspective episode on crypto’s identity, direction, and disconnection from its original mission.
With the crypto market experiencing some form of stagnation in recent weeks, It was the perfect setup to bring in a guest like Byron — a man who’s traded real capital, studied market structures, and now spends his days writing about what the industry refuses to confront.
Protocols Aren’t Startups — And That’s a Problem
Byron kicked things off with a challenge to crypto’s operating model: most token projects want the upside of being a company — but without the responsibilities.
“Most people view these protocols as startup businesses, and you know you wouldn’t expect a startup business to be returning revenue to equity holders.”
He argued that many token-based projects suffer from an identity mismatch. If tokens represent equity, where’s the dividend? If they represent usage, why does price matter? This ambiguity keeps protocols in limbo — unable to attract serious capital or deliver lasting value.
In his view, protocols should start acting more like cash-flowing companies and return value to holders — not hide behind vague governance tokens or DAO proposals.
“I think that it makes sense for protocols to start returning revenue to token holders immediately, just to prove that they do have a de facto claim on earnings.”
The Meme Economy Is Overcrowded and Overrated
One of the most striking sections came when Byron dissected the meme coin economy, calling it a lottery ticket to be bought occasionally.
“I’m not particularly bullish on meme coins, like I think they can be fun, and they can be lottery tickets, and I occasionally buy a lottery ticket. I also occasionally buy a meme coin,” he argued.
“But I don’t think that’s like a growing business, and if that was a business on the stock market, I think the stock would get a very low multiple.”
He explained that today’s meme coin market was loud, short-lived, and optimized for virality — not value. The result? A constant churn of token launches with no staying power, and an ecosystem dependent on attention instead of utility.
Byron however, made a case for Dogecoin, the OG meme coin, stating that Doge coin came into the crypto sphere at a time when there were very few crypto currencies available, so traders could actually have a deeper look at the token, understand it’s utility and use cases.
“Crypto is basically an attention economy. And at the time, you know, Dogecoin was created when our attention was, you know, split among a few dozen cryptocurrencies,” he stated.
“And now any new crypto that comes along it’s coming into an era where our attention is split among tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of them.”
Dogecoin ETFs, Financial Nihilism, and the Absurdity Spiral
Perhaps the sharpest critique came when Byron took aim at the rise of ETFs — particularly the rumored Dogecoin ETF.
“The idea of a dogecoin Etf is just absurd. There’s absolutely no reason why Dogecoin needs to be tradable on stock exchanges like. There’s a silver etf and a gold etf, and and whatever etf, because those things like have some use in the real economy.”
He argued that crypto’s obsession with financializing everything — from memes to governance tokens — has led to a kind of financial absurdism. Every new ETF or listing is treated like a milestone, when in reality, it’s just another way to chase short-term inflows.
“I just think that the idea of making meme coins available to stock market investors is just basically financial nihilism, which I think is really damaging to not only people but also to the economy.”
Bitcoin Is a Meme — and That’s Its Superpower
In a moment of radical honesty, Byron made a claim that would rattle Bitcoin maxis — but also vindicate them.
“Memes can be substantial. So I don’t mean to say that Bitcoin doesn’t have value. I think it does, but I think that the value is derived simply from this idea, that it has value which is circular and self-referential and and kind of confusing.”
He argued that Bitcoin’s true power lies not in its code or scarcity, but in its narrative durability. It survives because people keep repeating the story — and the more the story spreads, the more valuable the asset becomes.
Unlike other meme coins, however, Bitcoin has infrastructure, history, and belief density — giving it a layer of legitimacy that others can’t replicate.
Stablecoins: The Best and Worst of Crypto, All in One
Rounding out the episode, Byron offered a nuanced take on stablecoins, calling them both the most useful and the most ethically compromised part of crypto.
“You know the original promise of crypto, even going straight back to Satoshi’s white paper, is that crypto is Internet native money and stablecoins. So far are the best implementation of that.”
He praised them as “crypto’s actual product” — seamless, global, and programmable money. But he also warned that their KYC-free structure opens the door to laundering, evasion, and regulatory backlash.
“so I’ve got mixed feelings about stable coins being free of. Kyc, I think there is a good case to be made that they could be so useful and so economically productive that it’s worth tolerating the the crime that it enables.”
His takeaway? Stablecoins work — maybe too well. And that success is going to force crypto to finally reckon with privacy, compliance, and the trade-offs of freedom.
Final Thought: Crypto Needs to Grow Up — Or Risk Becoming Irrelevant
The throughline of Byron’s critique wasn’t that crypto has failed — it’s that it’s still refusing to define itself. It wants to be Wall Street without the rules, Silicon Valley without the pressure, and a rebellion without a cause.
That ambiguity has powered hype cycles. But it won’t power real transformation.
As Byron put it:
“Almost all of the revenue in Crypto is downstream of meme coin trading. Basically right? with like a couple of exceptions, maybe in the deep space. There’s very little of what you would call, you know, like something that’s traditionally investable.”
“But I still think Crypto is super interesting and fun. And you know, Crypto is still trying to reinvent finances which forces you to think about finance from 1st principles which I think is really interesting and worth doing.”
Where You Can Find Byron Gilliam
- Twitter: @bgilliam1982
- LinkedIn: Byron Gilliam
- Newsletter: Blockworks Daily
