Anthony Pompliano claims that most of the cryptocurrency industry is already dead and the market has not yet fully admitted it. In a video posted on May 6 on

Pompliano said the reaction to his first post on X was immediate and hostile. He wrote that “most of the crypto industry is dead and will never come back” – a message he said followed him through the Consensus conference in Miami.

“I’ve been called an idiot, I’ve been told I’m wrong, and at the Consensus Crypto Conference in Miami yesterday I was asked about this tweet probably over 50 times,” Pompliano said. “But after spending the day at the conference, I am more convinced today than I was yesterday. Most of the cryptocurrency industry is dead and will never come back.”

Crypto ghost chains and zombie coins

Pompliano’s core argument is based on what he sees as a broken business cycle in crypto. In conventional industries, failed companies are closed, capital is reallocated, and talent is reallocated towards stronger ideas. He said that in crypto, this settlement mechanism rarely works because blockchains can operate with minimal participation and tokens can remain well above zero even after liquidity and importance evaporate.

He described the result as an ecosystem filled with “ghost chains” and “zombie coins”. Ghost chains are networks that technically work but have little activity. Zombie coins are tokens whose communities or markets have collapsed, and the remaining holders are often unable to exit without suffering significant losses.

“There are millions of coins and thousands of blockchains,” Pompliano said. “These two things alone would make my original claim that most of the cryptocurrency industry is dead accurate. Because you have to ask yourself: does anyone really believe that millions of cryptocurrencies will thrive in the future?”

Pompliano said he asked the question from the stage at Consensus and “literally zero people raised their hands.”
Beyond unused networks and dead tokens, Pompliano argued that crypto has lost much of the ideological conviction that once defined its early base. In his view, the industry has moved from “staunch missionaries” who prioritize the success of Bitcoin and its underlying technology to “mercenaries” who pursue whichever deal offers the highest financial reward.

This shift, he says, is evident in short-lived meme tokens, imitation coins, market manipulation, rising yield incentives and the launch of products designed more for attention than utility. Pompliano’s criticism was not aimed solely at speculation, but at an industry culture that he believed had become disconnected from solving real user problems.
“If there are more mercenaries than missionaries, it means that the broader cryptocurrency industry is currently run by people who do not understand or believe in the original vision of the industry,” he said. “As the saying goes, if you don’t stand up for something, you’ll fall in love with anything. And I think that’s what’s happening throughout the industry.”

Wall Street is absorbing cryptocurrencies

Pompliano also took issue with what he called the “we-hate-investor class,” pointing to online criticism of venture capital, immense 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 mainstream institutions are now becoming the dominant layer of distribution of cryptocurrency exposure.

His main example was Morgan Stanley’s plan to launch Bitcoin trading through E-Trade. Pompliano noted that E-Trade has 8.6 million customers and said Morgan Stanley intends to offer Bitcoin trading with lower fees than Coinbase and Charles Schwab, using ZeroHash as its infrastructure. He described it as a sedate “violation of the narrative” for crypto companies.

At the same time, Pompliano said crypto companies are moving in the opposite direction, adding stocks, forecast markets, options, commodities and other non-crypto products. The distinction between cryptocurrency platforms and conventional brokerages is becoming less and less clear.

This convergence also shaped his reading of Michael Saylor’s recent comments that Strategic may sell Bitcoin or Bitcoin derivatives to fund preferred dividends if it serves the company’s interests. Pompliano said that years ago such an idea would have been considered “blasphemy,” but now it more closely resembles the standard allocation of capital in a funded Bitcoin business.

The cryptocurrency industry is dying.

This is a good thing.

The resilient and valuable aspects of the industry must compete on the biggest stage and not remain pigeonholed into a boutique industry with dwindling capital and talent. pic.twitter.com/TlVJAG6zFz

— Anthony Pompliano 🌪 (@APompliano) May 6, 2026

Crypto is becoming finance

Pompliano said he still sees core value in four areas: Bitcoin, stablecoins, infrastructure and tokenization. His thesis is not that all cryptocurrencies are disappearing, but that the speculative long tail is disappearing while the useful parts are absorbed by mainstream finance.

“We don’t need any more carnivals. We don’t need any more bullshit,” he said, referring to the “Crypto Carnival” booth he saw at Consensus. “We’re competing with traditional finance companies that have a lot of money and very smart people. We need more people focused on building real things for real problems.”

At press time, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies was $2.65 trillion.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com