Speculation as a Service: How Crypto Monetized Hope

September 26, 2025 at 03:00 AM EDT

Latest in Crypto

NEW YORK, NY, September 26, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ -- In crypto, hope is never just hope, it's a product.

Every whitepaper sells a vision. Every airdrop signals a future. Every new chain, layer, or protocol promises a world that hasn't been built yet, but definitely will be, as long as the number goes up.

The entire market runs on forward-looking statements wrapped in meme wrappers. People don't just buy tokens, they buy potential. They invest in the story, the aesthetic, the Twitter thread about "what's next."

Crypto doesn't offer guarantees. It offers anticipation.

And the people selling it? They've gotten really good at it.

Betting on Belief

It's not a scam. Not always. Some of these projects do deliver. Some teams do ship. But delivery is the exception, not the requirement. The game is built around buying in before there's anything to believe in, and hoping you're not the last one holding the bag when the vision proves hollow.

The tokens themselves? Often utility-free. The use case? Coming soon. The roadmap? Flexible. But the hype? Immediate.

This is speculation as a service. Product-market fit optional. Narrative-market fit required.

Mike Novogratz: The Bull Case, Personified

Few people embody this system more than Mike Novogratz.

The Galaxy Digital founder has never pretended to be a product guy. He's a macro guy. A conviction guy. A here's-why-I'm-bullish-at-$80K guy. He doesn't write code. He sets the tone. He makes big calls, backs big projects, and gets quoted on CNBC like he's pitching crypto as a state of mind.

And people listen. Because Novogratz is charismatic. Confident. Media-fluent. He's made and lost fortunes and keeps showing up for the next cycle with the same full-throated optimism.

He's not a fraud. He's a performer. And in this economy, that's often the same job.

The Barry Silbert Playbook: No Show, All Substance

Now contrast that with Barry Silbert.

No theatrics. No public hype loops. No tweetstorms predicting the next bull run. Just quiet, deliberate investment into the base layers of crypto: custody, compliance, liquidity, and trust.

Silbert doesn't sell speculation. He funds infrastructure.

He's not trying to win your attention. He's trying to win time. And while the Novogratz types sprint toward the spotlight, Silbert builds for the day when crypto has to work when there's no narrative left to borrow from the future, because the future has arrived.

The Monetization of Imagination

In most industries, hope is a motivator. In crypto, it's inventory.
Projects don't need to prove they work. They just need a plausible enough story to justify valuation. The L2 isn't live? Doesn't matter. The roadmap is five years out? Cool. The devs are anonymous? That's part of the brand.

Hope is what drives the pre-token valuation. It's what justifies the governance allocation. It's the reason there's $3B TVL in a protocol with no users.

But when everything is speculative, nothing has to be stable. And when hope becomes the product, crashes become inevitable.

The Cycle Is the Feature

Here's how it works:

1. A narrative forms.
2. A protocol launches.
3. A token pumps.
4. Everyone piles in.
5. The story cracks.
6. It crashes.
7. We call it fraud.
8. Then we do it again.

It's not broken. It's just optimized for attention, not outcomes.

And in that system, the people who stay quiet, who don't participate in the hype loop, end up looking like outliers.

When really, they're the only ones not trying to monetize belief.

When Patience Isn't Popular

Silbert's approach isn't sexy. He doesn't capitalize on short-term hype cycles. He doesn't market to the masses. He bets on systems, not moments.

That's why he doesn't have to "come back" every cycle. He never leaves. He doesn't overpromise. So he doesn't have to explain the crash.

Meanwhile, figures like Novogratz have to constantly narrate their position. Explain their optimism. Justify their next big call.

And sometimes they're right. That's the point. They only need to be right once.

Hope Is a Market. You're the Liquidity.

There's nothing wrong with being early. But being early without skepticism just makes you a useful target. Crypto has turned hope into a transactional asset class. And the sooner we admit that, the sooner we can stop pretending it's anything else.

The best builders aren't selling you a story. They're building one that doesn't need your permission to exist.

And when the next speculation cycle comes (and it will) maybe ask whether you're buying a product or just subscribing to a narrative.

Because in this market, the difference is everything.

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Speculation as a Service: How Crypto Monetized Hope

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