Why Does Crypto Make Everyone Paranoid?

--

Recently, a CEO at a company where I also serve as CTO had tokens stolen from a MetaMask wallet.

The strange part?

I’ve experienced something similar myself — especially on mobile devices.

And what still bothers me is this:

How does an attacker know a wallet received funds within just 2–3 minutes after a transfer from an exchange?

That question kept bothering me.

Even if a self-custody wallet encrypts private keys locally, is local storage on smartphones truly safe?

Modern smartphones are filled with apps requesting broad permissions:

• delivery apps
• taxi apps
• health apps
• storage access
• device information
• sometimes even call logs

At some point I started wondering:

How much trust are we actually placing into the mobile environment itself?

Maybe I’m overthinking it.

But after getting hacked, I started asking myself something uncomfortable:

If decentralization leads ordinary users to losing everything, why do many people eventually feel centralized systems are actually safer?

Ironically, when I managed EVM wallets myself for over 10 years in C#, I never had these kinds of problems.

Back then, I built and managed wallet utilities directly.

Something as simple as this already felt stable enough:

var ethTask = GetBalanceAsync(ETH_RPC, address);
var polTask = GetBalanceAsync(POL_RPC, address);
var bnbTask = GetBalanceAsync(BNB_RPC, address);

await Task.WhenAll(ethTask, polTask, bnbTask);

Simple multi-chain balance handling.
Predictable behavior.
Less abstraction.
Less hidden complexity.

Now?

Building modern self-custody wallet infrastructure across:

• EVM
• BTC
• TRX
• SOL
• XRP
• TON

has become mentally exhausting.

TON alone nearly broke me.

Especially when TON USDT decided to use “USD₮” instead of plain “USDT” and caused ridiculous slug/database comparison headaches 😂

And yet, despite all the frustration, I still keep building.

Maybe this industry didn’t just make me more security-conscious.

Maybe crypto slowly turns every builder into a paranoid person.

I’m still not sure which one is true.