All of these big home improvements have along with the absolute crap show crypto has become has me realizing I should have been considering the real world back then more than this online world that was supposedly going to give me long term passive income.

My crypto presence dropped off for the most part ages ago, but recently with the lows I've started to pay more attention. It's interesting what's happening, though: the market (both institutions and retail) are effectively managing risk to the point of ignoring chains that don't really do or generate anything. Larger projects that support L2 have largely survived because they've proven themselves. The chains that have 'DeFi' volume flowing have taken a large amount from centralised exchanges which have only grown more limiting with regulations around the world.

Chains like ETH, SOL, and BNB, XMR and ZEC have managed to survive primarily from the fact that they've been doing what crypto originally set out to do (albeit with some decentralisation here and there depending on the chain). But that's where the value has remained. PancakeSwap has a current $578,218,032.41 in BTC perp volume in the last 24 hours!

Naturally, the market is pricing out the chains that don't really see their original foundations playing out effectively, either in seeing no fees generated through the flow of capital in L2 applications or general trade volume within them.