Rejecting Skeuomorphic Crypto

Let's make things we don't yet have names for

I’m often asked what I think is next in crypto. I’m really not the best at predictions, but I do know what does and doesn’t excite me. Skeuomorphic translations of existing forms of value movement and commerce to onchain alternatives: not exciting. What’s exciting are the things we don’t yet have names for. I also get asked by normies if I think crypto can replace money.

I came across this tweet from 0xDesigner:

thinking about crypto as money is skeuomorphic. it's terribly unimaginative.

like how early tv was just radio hosts sitting at microphones. or how early internet yahoo had scheduled broadcasts.

you could do stuff with the new medium that the old one never could. it just takes a while to figure it out.

and we're still in that phase right now, using crypto as wallets, coins and payments.

we're playing pretend bank and stock market with a medium that lets you own literally anything you can think of: ideas, reputation, access, code, etc.

there are wild possibilities that we just haven't figured out at scale yet.

This resonated deeply with me. It’s a reminder that we’re still in the early stages of understanding what this technology can do. Using crypto to recreate the systems we already know—banking, payments, stock trading—is just the beginning. It’s like watching the first TV broadcasts and imagining that’s all the medium could be.

What’s truly exciting is exploring the possibilities that only crypto can unlock: owning and transferring concepts like ideas, access, and reputation in ways that weren’t possible before. The tools are here; the language and imagination to use them at scale are still catching up.

That’s where I want to focus—on the unimaginable, the unnamed, and the wild possibilities that lie ahead.