Is your social media feed once again full of crypto bros taking victory laps attesting to the inevitability of bitcoin?

If you’re wondering, "How did we get back here?" or why TV news told you that Bitcoin died, you’re not alone. Driven by viral social media campaigns like Elizabeth Warren’s "Anti-Crypto Army," crypto has become as dirty a word as investment banking was during the 2008 financial crisis. The crypto-is-a-scam crowd may have sounded prescient as FTX died in 2022, but the kindest thing you can call these critics today is lazy.

Several areas within the crypto sector are solving tangible problems at scale, from facilitating digital transactions to supporting an internet-native financial system. For instance, stablecoins, which peg digital assets to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, are reaching new heights in adoption, particularly in emerging markets where people face unstable local currencies.

Then there’s decentralized finance (DeFi), which enables users to lend, borrow, and trade assets directly, bypassing traditional financial intermediaries. In countries with limited access to banking, DeFi offers a significant opportunity for financial inclusion.

But since Sam Bankman-Fried’s ignominious fall in 2022, another new primitive is using crypto rails to rebuild the tangible world: decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN). These networks let individuals contribute resources, such as data or connectivity, in exchange for rewards.

One prominent example is Helium, a network that crowdsources mini-tower and hotspot deployment to create a decentralized mobile coverage network. With over 120,000 active mobile plans in service, Helium provides affordable connectivity by pushing operating costs to the edges of the network. However, it has been misrepresented as a scam after its token price collapsed.

These advancements reveal that while some may focus on the negatives, the crypto industry is actively innovating and delivering real-world solutions.