Anthony Pompliano says most of the crypto industry is already dead and that the market has not fully admitted it yet. In a May 6 video posted on X, the Bitcoin investor and commentator argued that the sectorโs long tail of unused chains, illiquid tokens and speculative projects is being cleared out as the parts with real utility merge into the broader financial system.
Pompliano said the reaction to his initial post on X was immediate and hostile. He had written that โmost of the crypto industry is dead and itโs never coming back,โ a message he said followed him through the Consensus conference in Miami.
โI have been called an idiot, Iโve been told I was wrong, and I must have been asked over 50 times about the tweet while I was at the Consensus Crypto Conference yesterday down in Miami,โ Pompliano said. โBut after spending the day at the conference, Iโm more convinced today than I was yesterday. Most of the crypto industry is dead and it is never coming back.โ
Crypto Ghost Chains And Zombie Coins
Pomplianoโs core argument rests on what he sees as a broken business cycle inside crypto. In traditional industries, failed companies are shut down, capital is redeployed and talent moves toward stronger ideas. In crypto, he said, that clearing mechanism rarely works because blockchains can keep running with minimal participation and tokens can linger far above zero even after liquidity and relevance have evaporated.
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He described the result as an ecosystem filled with โghost chainsโ and โzombie coins.โ Ghost chains are networks that remain technically operational but have little meaningful activity. Zombie coins are tokens whose communities or markets have collapsed, while remaining holders are often unable to exit without taking severe losses.
โThere are millions of coins and there are thousands of blockchains,โ Pompliano said. โJust those two things alone would make my original claim that most of the crypto industry is dead accurate. Because you have to ask yourself: does anyone actually believe that millions of crypto coins are going to thrive in the future?โ
Pompliano said he asked that question from the stage at Consensus and โliterally zero people raised their hand.โ
Beyond unused networks and dead tokens, Pompliano argued that crypto has lost much of the ideological conviction that once defined its early base. The industry, in his view, has shifted from โhardcore missionariesโ who prioritized the success of Bitcoin and the underlying technology toward โmercenariesโ who chase whichever trade offers the largest financial reward.
That shift, he said, is visible in short-lived meme tokens, scam coins, market manipulation, rising yield-farming incentives and product launches designed more for attention than utility. Pomplianoโs criticism was not aimed at speculation alone, but at an industry culture he believes has become detached from solving real user problems.
โIf you have mercenaries outnumbering the missionaries, the broader crypto industry is now run by people who donโt understand or believe in the original vision for the industry,โ he said. โAs the saying goes, if you donโt stand for something, youโll fall for anything. And I think thatโs whatโs happening across the industry.โ
Wall Street Is Absorbing Crypto
Pompliano also pushed back against what he called the โwe hate investors class,โ pointing to online criticism of venture capital, large financial institutions and regulation. He argued that venture firms funded much of the early infrastructure that allowed users to buy, store and send Bitcoin, while major institutions are now becoming the dominant distribution layer for crypto exposure.
Morgan Stanleyโs plan to launch Bitcoin trading through E-Trade was his central example. Pompliano noted that E-Trade has 8.6 million clients and said Morgan Stanley intends to offer Bitcoin trading with lower fees than Coinbase and Charles Schwab, using ZeroHash as infrastructure. He framed that as a major โnarrative violationโ for crypto-native firms.
At the same time, Pompliano said crypto-native companies are moving in the opposite direction by adding equities, prediction markets, options, commodities and other non-crypto products. The distinction between crypto platforms and traditional brokerages is becoming less clear.
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That convergence also shaped his reading of Michael Saylorโs recent comments that Strategy could sell Bitcoin or Bitcoin derivatives to fund preferred dividends if doing so served the companyโs interests. Pompliano said such an idea would have been treated as โblasphemyโ years ago, but now looks more like standard capital allocation inside a financialized Bitcoin business.
The crypto industry is dying.
That is a good thing.
The resilient and valuable aspects of the industry need to compete on the biggest stage, not stay pigeon-holed in a boutique industry with declining capital and talent. pic.twitter.com/TlVJAG6zFz
โ Anthony Pompliano ๐ช (@APompliano) May 6, 2026
Crypto Becomes Finance
Pompliano said he still sees major value accruing to four areas: Bitcoin, stablecoins, infrastructure and tokenization. His thesis is not that all crypto disappears, but that the speculative long tail does while the useful parts are absorbed into mainstream finance.
โWe do not need more carnivals. We do not need more nonsense,โ he said, referring to a โCrypto Carnivalโ booth he saw at Consensus. โWe are in a competition with the legacy financial firms that have a lot of money and very smart people. We need more people focused on building real things for real problems.โ
At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.65 trillion.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
