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Hyperliquid (HYPE) founder Jeff Yan says the cryptocurrency industry’s biggest problem is culture. In a recent interview, Yan argued the industry’s “get-rich-quick” vibe has pushed serious builders away. His point was simple: if the room is filled with people chasing fast money, you do not get long-term products.
Jeff Yan Says Crypto Reputation Is Scaring Off Talent
Indeed, in an interview on the When Shift Happens channel, streamed on February 19, Yan describes a gap between what crypto could build and who is actually showing up to build it. He said talented people often write the entire space off because of the nonstop parade of ugly examples, and that leaves a smaller pool of builders to do the hard work. As he stressed:
“I think there is a general mismatch of between what could get built and the people trying to build it in crypto. I think this is probably due to the bad reputation crypto has gotten compared to fields like AI.”
The result, in his view, is an ecosystem that looks louder than it is, with too many participants hunting for the next pump instead of shipping useful infrastructure, and “I just don’t think that’s the true potential of the space.”
He also framed this as a branding problem that crypto created for itself. If you are a strong engineer weighing options, artificial intelligence (AI) looks like prestige and momentum, whereas crypto looks like a career risk.
“I think a lot of these people are not even seriously considering crypto because of all the negative examples and the fact it’s sort of associated with people who are not serious about building something, but just kind of want to maybe quickly make some amount of money.”
Yan’s message isn’t that ‘everyone’s wrong,’ but that the default perception is doing real damage, and the crypto industry has to outbuild it.
Ignore The Meta, Build What You Believe
Yan said the best way to fix the builder shortage isn’t more slogans or marketing, but execution. He pointed to Hyperliquid’s approach of staying focused on what the team thinks is correct instead of chasing trends or trying to win every narrative fight.
“Hyperliquid is known for not really caring about what the meta is. (…) We just kind of do what we believe in as a community.”
And that’s leading by example, staying grounded, and letting the work pull serious people back in.
He also made a broader claim about why building in crypto still matters. Finance is trust-heavy, and the current system is not built for a world where software agents and automated strategies move value at scale.
“There’s inherently a lot of responsibility in building anything financial. (…) Finance is such an important part of a person’s life and when someone uses a financial product, they are inherently trusting in a way. You don’t get the same trust in a consumer product.”
Yan’s bet is that a programmable financial layer will be necessary, and that crypto still has the clearest path to it.
“Before AI (…) renders human intelligence obsolete, I think there needs to be a financial system to which they can plug in. (…) And there is no way that AI will plug into the existing financial system.”
Whether you buy that vision or not, his critique lands because it names the thing everyone notices but rarely says out loud: Web3 will not look ‘serious’ until it acts serious.