Hedge Fund Expert Warns of Crypto’s ‘Quiet Quitting’ Crisis

The cryptocurrency industry is facing what has been termed a “quiet quitting crisis,” as noted by an experienced hedge fund and digital asset professional.

Quiet quitting is a phrase that gained traction in 2022, describing workers who fulfill only the minimum requirements of their roles and abandon the notion of going above and beyond.

Travis Kling, founder and chief investment officer of Ikigai Asset Management, states that this term aptly captures the current dynamics within the cryptocurrency sphere.

“What I’m observing is that a significant portion of the crypto community has become noticeably less involved compared to previous years. This declining engagement stems from a waning belief in the ability of crypto projects to address real-world issues and achieve substantial adoption. That promise was fervently marketed from 2017, when I entered the scene, through 2022 – ‘crypto will tackle tangible problems and attract considerable adoption.’ Billions in venture capital were invested based on that premise.”

Kling asserts that it has become clear just how “pointless and grossly overvalued” many crypto ventures truly are.

“Crypto supporters are struggling to identify what could trigger the next major upswing. There’s no DeFi summer. No NFT renaissance. The gaming sector is currently DOA (dead on arrival). The Metaverse has turned into a total farce. Decentralized social networks have stagnated. There’s some budding enthusiasm about crypto x AI (artificial intelligence), but I (and many others) believe that this excitement may be misguided (at least for now).

DePIN is thriving and expanding, marking it as an intriguing area – quite possibly the most promising aspect in the alternative cryptocurrency landscape at this moment. However, such segments within crypto remain sparse.”

DePIN refers to decentralized physical infrastructure networks, which intend to harness blockchain technology to empower individuals or organizations with control over physical assets like wireless networks, data storage, or computing power in a decentralized way.

Kling further claims that crypto is “not as nascent as people think.”

“Bitcoin is currently valued at a trillion dollars, and a substantial portion of Wall Street has a stake in it. The remainder of crypto is valued similarly. Tether possesses more Treasuries than Germany. Over the last four years, more than $20 billion in venture capital has flowed into this industry. We are not in the early stages. Stop drawing parallels with ‘the internet in the late 90s, look at what transpired there.’ This is not the internet of the late 90s. Bitcoin has established product-market fit, stablecoins have product-market fit, while much of the remaining crypto is adrift.

These are at best solutions in search of problems and at worst, a relentless and brutal scam.

Despite his reservations about the industry, Kling does believe that if former President Donald Trump secures victory in the upcoming US presidential election, his administration could bring about a regulatory environment favorable to altcoins.

“We’ve been discussing this concept for years here – the interplay between value creation and value retention, with token structure serving as the link. In a Trump administration, we might see a shift away from ineffective governance tokens towards yield-bearing, token-burning pseudo-securities – enabled by a regulatory framework that supports such changes. This could lead to a significantly different altcoin landscape in two years.”

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