Some early crypto enthusiasts have bailed on the sector, saying the movement has bought into hype without understanding the technology’s limits

Some early crypto enthusiasts have bailed on the sector, saying the movement has bought into hype without understanding the technology’s limits

Crypto has plenty of detractors, but it is those who were once inside the tent that attract the most interest - and ire. That's the upshot of a recent Financial Times Magazine that interviewed several early crypto superfans who have since become disillusioned with the sector. The FT spoke with an unnamed figure dubbed "Neil," who in 2014, fresh out of college, joined Coinbase, then an obscure crypto startup. Neil, a computer science student, was first attracted to the idea of virtual money as a neat programming problem to solve. But he quickly became swept up in the revolutionary ethos of the early crypto scene, which promised to take on the bad, old financial system and replace it with something better. That spirit still lives on in some of today's most vocal crypto proponents. Take, for instance, Twitter's Jack Dorsey, who said the ultimate ambition of is that it "creates world peace." Or take Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, which . At the Miami bitcoin conference in June now famous for the announcement would officially adopt bitcoin, "the apex property of the human race," saying it "fixes everything." In 2014, that degree of crypto hype was less mainstream. Yet for Neil,