I bet the last 8 years of my life on crypto. I’d do it again tomorrow. In 2017, I ran the 0x Slack (no one used Discord back then) before the ZRX ICO. We had around 30k people in the general channel. After launch, communities started popping up across the world to teach others about DEXs. That was the first time crypto really felt like a movement to me. It was a wild time. ETH ran from single digits to over $1k. A few of us coined the term “DeFi” in a tg chat. The runner up term was “OpenFi”... I think defi has worked out quite well. Anyways, ZRX went on to become the first ERC20 token listed on Coinbase. At the time, they only supported BTC, LTC, and ETH. Maybe BCH too? Not sure, I just remember having to do something weird to claim my BCH fork. But overall, everything was great! Then came crypto winter... ETH dropped to double digits. Old friends stopped reaching out. Many thought it was actually over. But I stayed. I kept building because I truly believed crypto could change everything. DEXs continued to grow market as we saw innovation with aggregators and AMMs. At 0x, we expanded the protocol, launched 0x API, @matchaxyz, and built one of the most talented teams in the space. I made lifelong friends there. Years later, I brought those lessons to Azuki. I started writing this post because I was looking into some stablecoin stats and I’m just in awe at how far the industry has come. $250b in stables and climbing, governments and public companies buying BTC, Circle just had a baller IPO. It's really surreal. This is our moment! I made a bet to spend the last ~decade of my life building in this space. I’m glad I did. We spent years laying out the infrastructure. Now we’re finally building brands and apps that can reach the world. It takes an entire ecosystem of partners like @arbitrum, @privy_io, @conduitxyz, and @celestia to enable Azuki to do what we do. 🫰 Throughout my journey I’ve made many mistakes. I’ve learned from them. But one thing hasn’t changed: when I believe in something, I don’t quit. So when I say we’re going to tokenize the anime industry and revolutionize fandom, I mean it. Strap in and get ready for Anime szn.