In financial history, many ideas were considered quirky when they first appeared. They were often mocked, doubted, and seen as 'non-existent.' However, many of them became important financial tools simply because enough people believed in their value.
Take 'tracking stock' as an example. This type of stock does not give you actual ownership of any asset of the parent company. You also have no voting rights in any decisions. The only thing you have is a vague promise of benefiting from the performance of a specific division in the company. It may sound hard to believe, but this collective belief has helped many people become wealthy.
The crypto world today operates according to similar principles. When you buy a token, you don't actually own any tangible asset. You also don't have any legal voting rights in the development team's business decisions. You simply own a belief—that one day, the token's value will increase because the founding team will do the right things.
At first glance, it may seem fragile, but in reality, this belief is incredibly strong. Recently, the Aave Labs protocol attempted to change the way profits are allocated a bit. The community's reaction was extremely intense. They did not react due to any legal rights—indeed, they had no rights at all. They reacted because they believe that their tokens represent some form of intangible collective ownership. In the end, Aave Labs had to withdraw the proposal—not because of the law, but because they knew well: losing trust means losing everything.
In fact, the entire crypto economy is built on this very belief. No one is forced to pay dividends, no one has to guarantee that the tokens will be linked to real cash flow. Yet people continue to buy, hold, and trade. Why? Because the value of the token does not lie in legal ownership—but in the power of collective belief.
This is not meaningless or fanciful as many think. It is the common belief that has helped the crypto market grow to trillions of dollars. That is why crypto projects continuously commit, build, and develop. In a world full of uncertainty, the most valuable thing may not be clear legal documents, but rather the ability to maintain trust.
You don't necessarily need a clear certificate of ownership to become wealthy. You just need many other people to believe that you are rich. That is the strange yet most powerful force of crypto today.