The Soul of DeFi and Those Who Still Carry It
Bitcoin didn't begin with boardrooms and ETFs. It began with Satoshi and the cypherpunks. People who didn’t shave for consensus. Who didn’t wear suits to get permission.
What kind of person do you become when no one tells you what to do?
Do you seek freedom because you crave power, or because you refuse to be ruled?
Would you rather be uncomfortable and sovereign, or polished and owned?
These are not just questions for crypto. They’re questions for life. And once upon a time, they burned at the core of everything blockchain stood for.
So where did that fire go?
Where are the dusty terminals, the tinfoil ideologies, the late-night IRC battles over privacy and power?
Where are the cypherpunks?
The Rise of Code-First Rebellion
Bitcoin didn't begin with boardrooms and ETFs. It began with Satoshi and the cypherpunks. People who didn’t shave for consensus. Who didn’t wear suits to get permission. Who built trustless systems not to impress the banks — but to replace them.
Back then, decentralization wasn’t a buzzword. It was a shield against tyranny. It was a protest against surveillance. It was a way of being.
And for a while, it was glorious.
Then came the shift.
The VC suits. The compliance bros. The quiet re-entry of the same gatekeepers we once coded against.
We watched as decentralization became delegation, as freedom became fiat-backed rewards, as crypto swapped self-sovereignty for sleek interfaces and cashback cards.
The cypherpunk fire got trimmed into a logo.
The Class Divide in Crypto
There’s an aesthetic split in this space that no one talks about.
Look around. The communities still clinging to real DeFi — HEX, PulseChain, early Bitcoiners who never left the roots — they’re usually not in suits. They’re not hosting investor brunches.
They’re rough. Raw. Sometimes hard to stomach.
But they’re real.
On the other side? You get the blazer crowd. The well-groomed LinkedIn class that wants to straddle crypto and Wall Street. They love compliance. They cheer for stablecoins that can be frozen and wallets that can be shut off.
They want crypto to feel safe. But the truth is: crypto was never meant to be safe. It was meant to be free.
Thank You Richard Heart
When most voices got quiet, one man kept yelling.
Richard Heart didn’t care for approval. He wore outrageous clothes, said what he meant, and dropped truthbombs like grenades in glass houses. He reminded us that crypto isn’t about fitting in.
It’s about taking the power back.
HEX was immutable. PulseChain gave us freedom at Layer 1. PulseX gave us a DEX that can’t be paused. No admin keys. No backdoors. No freeze buttons.
Just code. And consequences.
Richard showed an entire generation how to hold the line.
The Fire Is Still Burning
If you're here reading this, chances are you still feel it too.
That raw, uncompromising instinct that whispers: "I want to be free. Even if it costs me comfort."
You are not alone.
We are still here. Still building. Still shouting across the noise of marketing departments and institutional compromise.
And every time you choose trustless code over convenience, every time you say no to the polished lie, every time you remind someone what crypto was supposed to be...
You keep the fire alive.
So I’ll leave you with this:
If you’re not the master of yourself, you’ll always end up serving one. And you may not even notice until it’s too late.
Veritya doesn’t write to impress. She writes to remind. If this hit something in you, you know where to find her. @i_am_veritya on X. No filters. Just signal.
