Years later, May grew disillusioned with the "crypto hype" of the 2010s, quipping that Bitcoin enthusiasts had strayed from the original anti-state vision. He once compared modern crypto projects to "barbed wire"-a metaphor from his manifesto for systems that restrict freedom-ironic, since he’d initially used "barbed wire" to represent government control that cryptography would cut through.

A telling moment occurred during the "BlackNet" thought experiment May proposed: an anonymous, encrypted marketplace for trading secrets (e.g., corporate data, government leaks). He joked that even the plans for BlackNet itself could be sold on BlackNet-a self-referential paradox highlighting crypto-anarchy’s potential for chaotic, self-sustaining systems.