We’re approaching a point where being passed over for “culture fit” is a compliment. Hopefully the embarrassment is enough to expand the founder vetting checkboxes.
Once a phrase gains mainstream adoption and starts to rapidly lose meaning, I find that people who care dearly about that thing start calling it something else.
That said -- I really struggle to find the people who are really all in on crypto in a technical sense. Where are the people building cool things and trying to push the boundaries with crypto? Surely it's still happening but just hard to find it in all the debris/trash.
Whether it comes back or not will depend, imo, on Bitcoin adhering to the 4 year cycle. So far, Bitcoin has gone up after every halving. Bitcoin leads and the market follows on the “inevitability” of Bitcoin going up after a halving.
But Bitcoin has also only existed in a relaxed regulatory regime and a monetary policy of low rates and cheap money. Now cheap money is off the table and the market has become too big to go unregulated.
If Bitcoin doesn’t go up in the next cycle, it might just break faith in the market and then who knows?
I’d check back in mid-late 2023 if I were you. You might also want to learn some solidity development. All the decent devs I know who were active from 2019 onwards made 8 figures this run