Comment by mhendric

Author here. The essay's argument is actually the opposite of that. The team was talented. Proof-of-Transfer was a real technical contribution. The SEC qualification was historic. What I'm describing is how structural incentives bent a legitimate effort toward narrative optimization over time. That's a harder problem than fraud. There's no villain, just a system that rewards the wrong things. Reducing it to "scams" makes it too easy and misses the lesson for anyone building with a financial instrument attached.