Anthony Pompliano says most of the crypto industry is already dead and the market hasn’t fully admitted this yet. In a May 6 video posted to
Pompliano said the response to his first message on X was immediate and hostile. He had written that “most of the crypto industry is dead and never coming back,” a message he said followed him through the Consensus Conference in Miami.
“I’ve been called an idiot, told I was wrong, and I must have been asked about the tweet over 50 times while I was at the Consensus Crypto Conference in Miami yesterday,” Pompliano said. “But after spending a day at the conference, I am more convinced today than yesterday. Most of the crypto industry is dead and never coming back.”
Crypto ghost chains and zombie coins
Pompliano’s core argument rests on what he sees as a broken business cycle within crypto. In traditional industries, bankrupt companies are closed, capital is redeployed, and talent moves toward stronger ideas. In crypto, he said, that clearing mechanism rarely works because blockchains can continue to run with minimal participation and tokens can remain stuck well above zero even after liquidity and relevance have evaporated.
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He described the result as an ecosystem filled with “ghost chains” and “zombie coins.” Ghost chains are networks that remain technically operational but have little meaningful activity. Zombie coins are tokens whose communities or markets have collapsed, with remaining holders often unable to exit without suffering serious losses.
“There are millions of coins and there are thousands of blockchains,” Pompliano said. “These two things alone would make my original statement that most of the crypto industry is completely accurate. Because you have to ask yourself: Does anyone actually believe that millions of crypto coins will flourish in the future?”
Pompliano said he asked that question from the podium at Consensus and “literally zero people raised their hands.”
In addition to unused networks and dead tokens, Pompliano argued that crypto has lost much of the ideological conviction that once defined its early foundation. According to him, the industry has shifted from “hardcore missionaries” who prioritized the success of Bitcoin and its underlying technology, to “mercenaries” who pursue the trade that yields the greatest financial reward.
That shift, he said, is visible in short-lived meme tokens, scam coins, market manipulation, increasing yield farming incentives and product launches designed more for attention than utility. Pompliano’s criticism was not just about speculation, but about an industry culture that he believes has become disconnected from solving real user problems.
“If the mercenaries outnumber the missionaries, the broader crypto industry is now run by people who do not understand or believe in the original vision for the industry,” he said. “As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And I think that’s what’s happening throughout the industry.”
Wall Street is absorbing crypto
Pompliano also pushed back against what he called the “we hate investor class,” pointing to online criticism of venture capital, big financial institutions and regulation. He argued that venture capital firms funded much of the early infrastructure that allowed users to buy, store and send Bitcoin, while large institutions are now becoming the dominant distribution layer for crypto exposure.
Morgan Stanley’s plan to launch Bitcoin trading via E-Trade was its central example. Noting that E-Trade has 8.6 million customers, Pompliano said Morgan Stanley plans to offer Bitcoin trading at a lower cost than Coinbase and Charles Schwab, using ZeroHash as infrastructure. He described that as a major “narrative violation” for crypto-native companies.
At the same time, Pompliano said crypto-native companies are moving in the opposite direction by adding stocks, prediction markets, options, commodities and other non-crypto products. The distinction between crypto platforms and traditional brokers is becoming less and less clear.
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That convergence also shaped his reading of Michael Saylor’s recent comments that Strategy could sell Bitcoin or Bitcoin derivatives to fund preferred dividends if it served the company’s interests. Pompliano said such an idea would have been treated as “blasphemy” years ago, but now looks more like the standard capital allocation within a financialized Bitcoin company.
The crypto industry is dying.
That’s a good thing.
The resilient and valuable aspects of the industry must compete on the biggest stage and not remain pigeonholed in a boutique industry with dwindling capital and talent. pic.twitter.com/TlVJAG6zFz
— Anthony Pompliano 🌪 (@APompliano) May 6, 2026
Crypto becomes finance
Pompliano said he continues to see major value growth in four areas: Bitcoin, stablecoins, infrastructure and tokenization. His thesis is not that all crypto will disappear, but that the speculative long tail will disappear while the useful parts are absorbed into the mainstream financial world.
“We don’t need more carnivals. We don’t need more nonsense,” he said, referring to a “Crypto Carnival” booth he saw on Consensus. “We’re competing with the traditional financial companies that have a lot of money and very smart people. We need more people focused on building real things for real problems.”
At the time of writing, the total crypto market capitalization was $2.65 trillion.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com