I've been seeing a lot of crypto "OGs" talk about quitting lately.

I understand the sentiment, I do. Many were singing the praises of Sam and FTX as recently as last week, and now feel they've been had. It sucks to feel deceived.

But you can't quit.

Those of us old enough to remember Mt Gox can't help but feel we're repeating history, and understandably but wrongly interpret that as having not made progress.

We've made progress. We've made SO MUCH progress.

The events of this week have been terrible, no doubt. Sam and Caroline played us all for fools, and tens of thousands of innocents were hurt as a result of their negligence, or malfeasance.

The truth is that as our space grows, so too do the villains.

And now regulators are going to come for us, hard. If they have their way, they'll kill and replace pieces of the system with their own, until they unilaterally control everything.

The infection has already begun.

We were all blindsided. Upset you didn't see it coming? Nobody did.

We got got, plain and simple. So we take our lumps and move on.

If the people we look to as leaders are wallowing, crying, and admitting defeat; we don't stand a chance.

So fuck it, I bought more ETH.

This was not a failure of crypto. In fact, the beautiful irony of it all is that this highlights more than ever the importance of crypto's major tenets: self custody, true ownership, trustlessness, and transparency.

Once again, this was a failure of traditional systems.

Maybe Sam and Caroline are drug addicted sociopaths, or even psychopaths. Maybe they are plants, sent by the fed to bring us down from the inside. Whatever they were doesn't really matter now, does it?

All that matters is how we respond.

The past week has been about helping each other. @0xfoobar and @zachxbt tracking funds in real-time, @tier10k and @AutismCapital breaking news literally around the clock, @MarioNawfal hosting amazing spaces nonstop, @ledgerstatus and @cobie suddenly doing daily UpOnly episodes...

That side of things won't reach the media.

The Times won't report on how self-custodied funds were once again safe, and the chain kept appending blocks, oblivious to the chaos around it.

They won't talk about how in the long run, this is better for crypto.

Nobody will talk about how we rallied to save each other's funds, and track SBF, and put OUR OWN story together.

But that's the narrative that should be coming out of this. That should be the main takeaway.

"Internet strangers with cartoon animal PFPs show great empathy and coordination"

I guess that doesn't sell as well as "Crypto sees lowest prices in 4 months amongst yet another scandal".

Our community is fucking unstoppable. Don't let anybody make you forget that.