# Crypto is the Real World: Understanding the Cryptonative Economy by Josef Je | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: Josef Je
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 16:32
- Topics: Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-Y0u6J1OmPXc
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0u6J1OmPXc

## Description

Ethereum has often been viewed as a separate, speculative space detached from the "real world." However, recent developments and analyses reveal that the cryptonative economy is not only substantial but also comparable to traditional economies in its scope and dynamics. This talk will delve into the findings of the Cryptonative Economy Reports, highlighting the significant economic demand for Ethereum and showcasing where has Ethereum become the real world already.

Speaker(s): Josef Je
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: Real World Ethereum
Keywords: Digital Sovereignty, Use Cases, Economics, cryptonative

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## Transcript

[Music] [Music] hey everybody um so crypto is the real world um today I'm going to try to convince you that crypto isn't a niche anymore but that in fact it's a it's a blueprint to the future of economy um and one thing that triggered me to pick this topic is that like um increasingly we start using the term rwa the real world assets which kind of implies that well all of the other stuff that we've been using so far isn't the real world and I actually would like to protest today uh and make a case about um this actually not being the reality uh so my name is Joseph uh I got into crypto in uh 20 2011 thanks to so cro um then thanks to ethereum I started organizing meetups and started getting my hands dirty um I used to work as a solid an auditor uh and uh since 2018 I helped the eum foundation with organizing operations around the R&D teams and finally since the beginning of 2022 um I started Pond and started hosting conferences on my own as as mentioned I used to help with defcons before so I'm thrilled to see how how they've grown and well thanks to to the team organizing this I know you can see the talks but maybe later this will make you happy um so I'll take you to several steps first I'll look at into the terminology what is an economy or what is the Crypton native economy uh and how does it compare to the real world and finally I'll finish up with a quick retrospect of the past few years so what is an economy um I'll borrow a definition from the Austrian economics um of basically a too long didn't read from from mises and uh and Hayek an economy is the result of individual actions and choices driven by human purpose and subjective preferences it is a network of volunteer exchanges and Co comperative activities where resources are allocated through the spontaneous interactions of individuals in the market so we could say it's it's a living organism and here during the talk I'll try to try to describe that living organism very imperfectly uh because it's very hard to give you the upto-date numbers so what you see here what you what you're going to see are basically best attempts and estimates uh and therefore would like to ask you to challenge those numbers and later on uh reach out or like published uh articles on your own uh trying to to get those numbers right because that's the only way we can actually describe the reality in the best way so what is the Crypton native economy with paon we've been publishing these Crypt native economy reports for past several years and what we attempt is to look into the onchain revenue so all of the stuff that happens on chain as a measurement of that economic interaction of the demand for using the stuff that all of us are working on so for the purpose of the of the reports we picked L1 feed L2 fees and protocol fees but there is a lot more uh so the stuff that's not included in our numbers but could be considered as the measure of the the Crypton native economy or the crypto economy would be revenues from centralized exchanges Mining and staking rewards crypto Services uh etc etc um so quick too long didn't read you can find all of the reports under the QR code or under Crypton native. XYZ uh but in 2020 the the onchain revenues were somewhere around 1.44 billion 2021 the peak of the bull market 20 billion and going down from there now in 2024 we we finally started seeing a pickup in uh in the demand and our estimate based on the numbers um from the end of October is that it will uh result in something like 12 to 15 billion and this is again just the onchain part um so as I said well this is going to be imperfect so this is there is some napkin mats to give you a glimpse into how does the ecosystem actually look like so how many many people do work in crypto uh if you take some examples of like the roughly known numbers um this is an estimate of um um figuring out like how many people get paid in crypto this isn't all of the ones that somehow make a living on crypto but the ones that we could say are employed in a way so if we say take the examples of the biggest companies such as coinbase uh they I think they report somewhere around 3.6 ,000 people binance roughly uh uh 2,000 500 we take 10 of those companies 50 companies of the size of like roughly EF or nethermind having 250 uh 100 smaller projects l1's l2s uh you name it at like 50 uh 50 people a team uh 500 of startups of the size of pondal thousands of early stage projects and tens of thousands of like team ups uh that's roughly 100,000 people um that we can say are employed in crypto uh which isn't a lot obviously um was the total Market cap this should be the up toate number from this morning so the tokens the tokens and coins only uh result in 3.2 uh trillion dollars um there is also the market cap which we didn't include in the Crypton native economy report but it's the the crypto economy itself there would be companies like binance like micro strategy maybe even Robin Hood uh we would be somewhere below $200 billion I think coinbase is at like $85 billion of of market cap plus there is a ton of companies that are private privately owned still like binance chain analysis chain analysis like openc all of those would rank in in billions obviously binance very likely much higher than that um so how does this reflect on the the rest of the economy uh the so-called Real World um to compare these two we basically picked these three metrics the market caps the revenues and the people uh and I hope this will give you some perspective about where we stand today so comparing the market caps um we basically took the stock market cap uh we take like the stock market caps as again the imperfect metric um you can you can take that as like demand to somehow participate on those assets um that either can act as a store of value or act as a promise of future value uh in form of revenues uh so the entire stock the entire like Tech stock market by the way there are overlaps between these um would be today valued at uh $33 trillion uh the banking sector the publicly traded Banks 10 billion uh 10 10 trillion dollar energy sector likewise for a uh Six uh6 Trillion doll gaming 4.2 uh and then there's crypto at like 3.8 um then there is auto automotive um so basically all of the car manufacturers and this is this is very real right like we would all agree that like that's the real world and crypto is actually already valued uh more than uh more than this part of the real world um then you have entertainment at two trillion food industry that's basically the large corporations we definitely don't go deeper into like the inur economy behind like the food industry or any of these just the publicly traded companies and finally Airlines there's one thing I want to uh focus on which is the gaming and entertainment comparism um here are the revenue estimates let's just do a quick readr but let's focus on the entertainment and gaming uh so the entertainment uh even though it's valued lower than the gaming industry and there is a partial overlap um is nearing um uh $900 billion and the the gaming is at like $600 billion in revenues crypto including the Crypton native part including the stake and rewards including the revenues of like binance and coin basing crack and so on I would argue it's like still below like 100 100 billion um now following up on the people metric uh uh this is the rough estimate of like how many people are employed by these sectors and obviously like there's over three billion people who are employed somewhere are making a live in so this is again just zoomed in on the stock companies um but there is an important like interesting and important fact here look at entertainment and gaming where gaming is like valued uh higher than entertainment entertainment still makes a bigger Revenue um um but also employs U more than twice as many people as the entertainment as such uh I would argue that the gaming industry is essentially a more effective um form of entertainment where um the the value per an individual in the segment uh is much higher than the overall entertainment um because they just create something more efficiently they create content that can like scale better that can people and people can stay with the content for much longer my argument would be crypto does very similar thing for finance and like we are still in this very very early stages of just few hundred or few hundred thousand people working in the ecosystem uh and we're yet to see basically the full scope of where where crypto can actually compete with the rest of the of the of the financial ecosystem and economy um so that's that's a rough comparism in numbers um I think we are still very early I mean we're obviously like Bitcoin it was started in uh 2009 um the worldwide web was started in 19 um 1989 and look where where it has led us multiple companies from the internet era being in the top 10 um this is was actually isn't the up-to-date slide I had to update it this morning because Bitcoin again like popped up into being the ninth most valuable um asset asset in the world this is from the infinite market cap um ethereum is quite close it's the it's a number it's actually 32 now uh and I would say within a year would actually again see ethereum to uh get Passover like the the Giants like Mastercard or VISA um as as a contender in this like globalized ecosystem and if you look at all of these companies I think it's like very hard to argue against crypto being the real thing like this this is very real this is very tangible and it already competes with like companies like Home Depot Costco or like whatever or axon mobile um so um it's definitely nowhere nowhere near kind of just like a gimmick for for few individuals uh so quick summary um you are the Crypton native economy since you're here I guess like you somehow participate in this ecosystem you all paid like fees on l1's l2s I would definitely encourage you to read the reports and give us some feedback um um I'm wearing the T-shirt Banks hate us it's usually my final slide but I'm not using it today but Banks hate us because we are winning um and I had multiple talks on the Crypton native economy and the Crypton native generation uh where argued that in the especially in the big inevitable Market we are at the stage of like now they're fighting us and I think we are now finally in the stage of uh of actually uh getting the recognition and being considered real from the rest of the world um before I depart um this is a slide that I Ed in 2022 exactly like in the bare Market um which basically looked at the Crypton native economy numbers and just like concluded was actually super small uh despite the uh despite the valuations um and it was peanuts back then it's still peanuts today uh but there is another peanut um the inside joke I'm not a trump supporter uh but I just think peanut is hilarious uh and I would just say like crypto is very real to today already uh today we're past the uh first they um ignore us then they will ridicule us and then they will fight us I think today we're at the stage where crypto started winning uh finally and uh I can't wait to see what what happens in the next few years um thank you all for coming well I think we have a couple minutes for questions that was awesome thank you so much Joseph you Canan this QR code and write questions we have a couple minutes to answer your questions but please we need to do it through the through the QR code you just you just take the code and then you can play your question and I will help you with that so I'll give you one minute to do that meanwhile um I wanted to say it's fantastic to have you all here this Defcon 7 is going to be epic it's going to be amazing and all of us and all of you being part of this is really fantastic so I want you to give yourself an Applause for being here today please no questions yet I I saw someone raising a hand should we just do the questions from people had raised a hand there's a gentleman right here we can try that meanwhile sure we can come on sure we can sure we can they're giving me directions just just just a second so so anyone wants to shout a question please yes I'll go so where you say we are in the first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win you're assuming that we're right now in the middle of the they're fighting us or that we've passed that they're fighting us that seems very naive don't you think there's much more much harder fights probably in the near future I mean there there will be but I think like at this stage we are we basically are past the past the they fighting us there is there is like a lot of lot of like embracement in crypto and you see it like take Switzerland as a as a as an example um even like us first starting company switzland we got rejected by multiple Banks including like the T and like Suri Canon Banks and so on um and last year they started providing the same crypto services to their regular customers and it's just like that's the that's the early birds right and I would say like we are going to see more and more even banks that will start custom services for crypto users uh because the the economic demand is there and like more and more even traditional fxs are embracing that that and they they just see it as a revenue Stream So I say like now now we're vinning in the sense of getting the recognition and actually like getting them integrated into our our own ecosystem um may be naive but I'm like being in the ecosystem for quite a bit I'm I'm quite optimistic about this being the stage right now perfect so now we have questions on the on the CER so Joseph could you please talk a bit about consumer payments in crypto Stables as a real world usage of tech um that I mean I'm not sure how much time we have but I think it's actually becoming like realer with the l2s uh with the providers that like pay your gas fees like three years ago that would be very um very hard I used to collaborate with this like group that was running a crypto only Cafe um and it was it was a burden like actually paying for gas fees and like teaching people like how to Works uh many people used it but definitely wasn't a real world use case I would say now with like um like gas being paid for you on l2s it's like very uh very possible um and I mean I'm sure we are going to see more businesses just like accepting crypto regularly and it's it's it's been happening for a decade now especially in the past like few years fantastic thank you so much Joseph please give a big Applause for Joseph and this great thought appreciate it thank you thank you