Late 90s, I was an equity derivatives quant at Salomon Brothers supporting the New York and Japanese desks. Japan’s market had gone nowhere for a decade. Rates near zero. Corporations couldn’t borrow — too debt-laden. Retail investors bleeding to inflation. We sold structured products to major banks. Knock-ins, knock-outs, range accruals to retail. Anything speculative that could attract capital. The complexity was our edge - if you could design something capital-efficient and hedge it, someone would buy. Looking at crypto now, it’s distorted déjà vu. Same fascination with complexity, different players and mechanics. In TradFi, the sell side takes its cut by hedging and largely avoids market manipulation. Here? The “house” is whoever controls order flow, token supply, or listing access. We tried to eliminate intermediaries - they just became the other side of the trade instead. Zero-sum game, but no rules. LPs getting wrecked by MEV. Token unlocks creating massive dilution disguised as “vesting” — selling pressure before markets can even form. Real projects that came on-chain to raise capital without intermediaries are starving for liquidity while money sloshes around elsewhere. It’s not just speculators or regulators. The market structure itself needs to change.