Cryptocurrencies Are Dying: Or Are They Evolving Into Something More Dangerous?

Dr. Wil Rodriguez
2 days ago
10 min read

By Dr. Wil Rodriguez | TOCSIN Magazine

The obituaries for cryptocurrency have been written thousands of times. Every market crash, every regulatory crackdown, every spectacular collapse of a major exchange or token brings fresh predictions of crypto’s imminent death. Yet here we are in 2025, and cryptocurrency refuses to die.

But perhaps that’s because we’re asking the wrong question. The question isn’t whether cryptocurrency is dying—it’s whether the cryptocurrency we thought we knew ever really existed at all. What if the dream of decentralized, anonymous, freedom-enabling digital money was always a mirage? And what if what’s emerging from the wreckage isn’t the death of crypto, but its metamorphosis into something far more sinister?

The evidence suggests we’re witnessing not the death of cryptocurrency, but its evolution into the most sophisticated financial surveillance system ever created. And we’re building it ourselves, one transaction at a time.

The Illusion of Death

The obituaries keep coming, but the data tells a different story. Over 400 million active wallet addresses exist globally, with widespread country-wise adoption across the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Despite numerous experts predicting its downfall year after year, the cryptocurrency market has demonstrated remarkable resilience and growth, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high of more than $73,000 in March 2024. Global crypto use is still growing, with forecasts suggesting up to 900 million users by the end of 2025.

These aren’t the statistics of a dying technology. They’re the metrics of a technology in transition—evolving from its anarchist origins into something entirely different.

But here’s where the story gets disturbing. While headline crypto metrics show growth, 52.7% of all cryptocurrencies on GeckoTerminal have failed, with the majority occurring during 2024 and early 2025. Alarmingly, the first quarter of 2025 alone saw the collapse of 1.8 million tokens, making up 49.7% of all recorded project failures.

This mass extinction event isn’t random. It’s Darwinian selection in real time. The survivors aren’t the most innovative or the most democratic—they’re the most compatible with existing power structures.

The Great Consolidation

What we’re witnessing isn’t the death of cryptocurrency—it’s its institutionalization. The market faced downturns, with several altcoins underperforming, while investor focus shifted toward established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. There are over 20,000 cryptocurrencies, but most fail due to poor development, lack of adoption, or outright scams. However, key players like Bitcoin and Ethereum remain dominant.

This consolidation isn’t accidental. It’s the natural result of regulatory pressure, institutional adoption, and market maturation. The wild west of cryptocurrency is being tamed, and the survivors are those that play nicely with traditional financial institutions, comply with government regulations, and abandon the radical decentralization that originally defined the space.

Bitcoin, once promoted as “digital gold” that would free individuals from government monetary control, now trades alongside traditional assets in institutional portfolios. Ethereum, originally envisioned as a “world computer” beyond the reach of any single authority, now processes transactions that are increasingly subject to compliance monitoring and regulatory oversight.

The cryptocurrency revolution is eating its own children. And what’s emerging isn’t liberation—it’s a more sophisticated form of financial control.

The CBDC Trojan Horse

The real story isn’t the evolution of existing cryptocurrencies—it’s the emergence of their replacement. Looking ahead, 2025 is likely to mark a pivotal year for CBDC adoption. Multiple G20 economies are expected to move from pilots to broader public rollouts. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is a new form of money that exists only in digital form. Instead of printing money, the central bank issues widely accessible digital coins.

Central Bank Digital Currencies represent the final capture of the cryptocurrency concept by the very institutions it was designed to circumvent. CBDCs offer all the technical benefits of cryptocurrency—instant transactions, reduced costs, programmable money—while eliminating everything that made crypto revolutionary: decentralization, anonymity, and independence from government control.

The surveillance implications are staggering. Data from tracing money routes could lead to losing financial privacy if the CBDC implementation does not have adequate privacy protections. This could lead to encouraging of self-censorship, deterioration of freedom of expression and association, and ultimately to stalling social developments. There are also concerns about privacy, as CBDC transactions could be subject to increased surveillance compared to cash.

For some hardline conservatives, this idea of government-sponsored blockchains of citizen transactions veers too close to Big Brother financial surveillance. But their concerns vastly understate the reality. CBDCs don’t just enable surveillance—they make surveillance inevitable, automatic, and comprehensive.

The Architecture of Financial Totalitarianism

Traditional cryptocurrency promised to eliminate intermediaries and create peer-to-peer financial freedom. CBDCs do the opposite: they eliminate the possibility of financial privacy while giving governments unprecedented control over individual economic behavior.

With CBDCs, every transaction becomes a data point in a comprehensive surveillance network. Unlike cash, which provides transaction privacy, or even traditional cryptocurrencies, which offer pseudonymity, CBDCs create permanent, traceable records of all economic activity tied directly to individual identities.

But the surveillance capability is just the beginning. CBDCs enable programmable money—currency that can be programmed with conditions, expiration dates, and spending restrictions. Imagine money that can only be spent on “approved” purchases, that expires if not used within a certain timeframe, or that can be frozen or confiscated without due process.

This isn’t speculative fiction. If poorly designed or managed, CBDC personal data use could pose risks to privacy, arising from events such as data leakages, data abuses, cyberattacks, and cross-border payments data flows. The infrastructure for this level of control is being built right now, under the guise of monetary innovation and financial inclusion.

The Social Credit Trojan

The most insidious aspect of CBDC development is how it’s being marketed. Governments and financial institutions promote CBDCs as solutions to financial inclusion, cross-border payments, and monetary policy effectiveness. A CBDC offers a safe store of value and efficient means of payment, which can increase competition for deposit funding.

But these benefits are carrots disguising the stick of comprehensive financial surveillance and control. CBDCs create the infrastructure for social credit systems—comprehensive scoring mechanisms that evaluate citizens’ behavior and restrict their access to financial services accordingly.

China’s social credit system already demonstrates how financial surveillance can be weaponized against dissent. Citizens with low social credit scores are prohibited from purchasing high-speed train tickets, staying in certain hotels, or accessing various government services. CBDCs would make such systems trivially easy to implement and virtually impossible to circumvent.

The same infrastructure that enables “financial inclusion” can exclude individuals deemed undesirable. The same programmable money that facilitates efficient transfers can be programmed to prevent “unacceptable” purchases. The same digital identity verification that reduces fraud can be used to track and control every aspect of economic life.

The Death of Financial Privacy

Perhaps the most profound loss in cryptocurrency’s evolution from liberation tool to control mechanism is the death of financial privacy. Traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin offered pseudonymity—transactions were recorded on a public ledger, but personal identities were not directly tied to wallet addresses.

Even this limited privacy is disappearing as exchanges implement comprehensive Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements, effectively linking real-world identities to crypto transactions. The CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) without congressional approval, but such legislative resistance may prove futile against the inexorable march toward financial surveillance.

The result is a financial system with unprecedented transparency for authorities and unprecedented vulnerability for citizens. Every financial transaction becomes part of a permanent record that can be analyzed, traced, and used for purposes far beyond the original intent of the transaction.

This represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power between individuals and institutions. Cash provided transaction privacy—the ability to engage in commerce without creating permanent records. Even traditional banking systems had limited visibility into the full scope of individual economic activity. CBDCs eliminate these privacy protections entirely.

The Behavioral Modification Economy

The true danger of cryptocurrency’s evolution isn’t just surveillance—it’s behavioral modification. When every financial transaction is tracked, analyzed, and potentially restricted, money becomes a tool for shaping behavior rather than simply facilitating exchange.

Programmable money could be used to incentivize “socially beneficial” behaviors and discourage “harmful” activities. Carbon credits could be automatically deducted from purchases with high environmental impact. “Sin taxes” could be applied in real-time to alcohol, tobacco, or gambling transactions. Food stamp benefits could be programmed to prevent purchases of items deemed “unhealthy.”

These capabilities will be introduced gradually, framed as beneficial innovations. Environmental protection, public health, social welfare—who could oppose such noble goals? But the infrastructure being created enables unprecedented government control over individual economic choices.

The social implications are profound. When financial transactions can be programmed, predicted, and prevented, the fundamental nature of economic freedom changes. Markets become tools of social engineering rather than spaces for voluntary exchange.

The Resistance Illusion

The cryptocurrency community’s response to this transformation has been largely ineffective because it fundamentally misunderstands what’s happening. Many crypto enthusiasts still believe they’re fighting for the original vision of decentralized, private digital money. They promote “privacy coins,” develop decentralized exchanges, and celebrate technical innovations that enhance anonymity and reduce government control.

But these efforts are becoming increasingly marginalized. Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies are being delisted from major exchanges. Decentralized platforms face regulatory pressure and compliance requirements that compromise their decentralized nature. Technical innovations that enhance privacy are characterized as tools for money laundering and terrorism financing.

The regulatory environment is systematically eliminating alternatives to surveilled, controlled digital money. The industry is characterised by a maturing market where clear regulation is gradually emerging, leading to increased investor confidence. This “maturation” represents the successful capture of the cryptocurrency ecosystem by traditional financial and regulatory institutions.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure for comprehensive financial surveillance and control continues to develop under the banner of innovation and efficiency. By the time the full implications become clear, the alternative infrastructure may have been eliminated.

The Global Coordination

What makes this transformation particularly concerning is its global coordination. Cross-border collaboration projects are being developed to ensure interoperability between different nations’ CBDCs. This isn’t coincidental—it represents a coordinated effort to create a global financial surveillance and control network.

The traditional financial system, for all its flaws, maintained some level of jurisdictional separation. Money held in different countries was subject to different regulations and surveillance capabilities. CBDCs eliminate this separation, creating the potential for global financial tracking and control systems.

International coordination on CBDC development ensures that individuals cannot escape financial surveillance by moving between jurisdictions. The system being created is designed to be comprehensive, inescapable, and permanent.

The Economic Panopticon

The ultimate destination of cryptocurrency’s evolution is what might be called an “economic panopticon”—a financial system where all transactions are visible to authorities, all economic behavior is monitored and analyzed, and all financial activity can be controlled or restricted based on algorithmic assessments of desirability.

This system will be presented as an advancement: more efficient, more secure, more inclusive than traditional finance. And in many technical respects, it will be superior. Transactions will be instant, costs will be lower, and fraud will be reduced. But these improvements come at the cost of economic freedom and financial privacy.

The panopticon model was originally a prison design where guards could observe all prisoners while remaining invisible themselves. In the economic panopticon being created through cryptocurrency’s evolution, all financial behavior is observable while the observation mechanisms remain opaque to those being observed.

Citizens will know their transactions are being monitored, but they won’t know what patterns are being identified, what behaviors are being flagged, or what consequences might result from their financial activities. This uncertainty creates a chilling effect on economic behavior, encouraging self-censorship and conformity.

The Path Forward: Resistance or Capitulation?

The question facing society isn’t whether cryptocurrency will die—it’s whether we’ll accept its transformation into a tool of financial control. The technology itself is neutral, but the systems being built with that technology are not.

There are still opportunities to resist this transformation, but they require recognizing what’s actually happening. The battle isn’t between cryptocurrency and traditional finance—it’s between financial freedom and financial control. And currently, control is winning.

True resistance would require:

Protecting Financial Privacy: Supporting truly decentralized, privacy-preserving financial systems, even when they’re labeled as tools for criminal activity.

Maintaining Alternative Systems: Preserving physical cash, local currencies, and other financial systems that operate outside comprehensive surveillance networks.

Demanding Transparency: Requiring that surveillance capabilities built into financial systems be clearly disclosed and democratically debated.

International Coordination: Building global networks of resistance to comprehensive financial surveillance, recognizing that the threat is coordinated across borders.

Technical Innovation: Developing financial technologies that prioritize individual privacy and autonomy over institutional convenience and control.

But these forms of resistance face enormous challenges. They require coordinated action in the face of powerful institutional incentives that favor surveillance and control. They require individual sacrifice for collective benefit. And they require fighting against systems that will be presented as beneficial innovations rather than threats to freedom.

The Choice We Face

Cryptocurrency is not dying. It’s evolving. And the direction of that evolution represents one of the most significant threats to individual freedom in the digital age. What began as a technology for liberation is becoming an infrastructure for control.

The question isn’t whether this evolution will continue—current trends make that virtually certain. The question is whether we’ll recognize what’s happening in time to preserve alternatives, or whether we’ll sleepwalk into a future where every financial transaction is monitored, analyzed, and potentially controlled by algorithmic systems operating beyond democratic oversight.

The transformation of cryptocurrency from liberation tool to control mechanism represents a broader pattern in the digital age: technologies developed to enhance individual freedom and capability are systematically captured and redirected toward surveillance and control.

We stand at a crossroads. We can accept the evolution of cryptocurrency into sophisticated financial surveillance infrastructure, enjoying the technical benefits while surrendering financial privacy and autonomy. Or we can recognize that true financial freedom requires preserving systems that prioritize individual privacy over institutional convenience, even when those systems are less efficient, less convenient, and more vulnerable to criminal misuse.

The cryptocurrency obituaries will continue to be written. But the real death we should fear isn’t the death of particular technologies—it’s the death of financial freedom itself. And that death is being accomplished not through the failure of cryptocurrency, but through its success in evolving exactly as powerful institutions intended.

The revolution is being betrayed by its own success. And most revolutionaries don’t even realize it’s happening.

Reflection Box

Consider your own relationship with digital money and financial privacy:

How much of your financial activity already takes place through systems that create permanent, traceable records?
What financial transactions do you consider private, and how might that change in a CBDC system?
Would you be comfortable with government authorities having real-time access to all your financial transactions if it were presented as improving efficiency or preventing crime?
How important is the ability to make anonymous purchases to your sense of personal freedom?
If programmable money could prevent you from making purchases the government considered harmful, would you view that as protection or control?
Do you believe the benefits of financial surveillance (reduced crime, improved tax collection, better monetary policy) justify the loss of financial privacy?

If these questions make you uncomfortable, you’re beginning to understand what we’re building. The discomfort isn’t a flaw in the system—it’s a feature.

Ready to understand the hidden transformation reshaping money itself?

TOCSIN Magazine exposes the forces turning liberation technologies into control mechanisms. From cryptocurrency capture to surveillance capitalism, we investigate the systems being built in the name of progress.

Subscribe to TOCSIN Magazine for essential analysis of: