Building a Better Bank: Vikram on Why Crypto Keeps Rebuilding Broken Finance In this episode of DROPS, I sit down with @vik_runa, co-founder of @superformxyz and former DeFi portfolio manager at BlockTower, to discuss why most people lose money in crypto, how the industry has repeated many of the same mistakes as traditional finance, and what it would actually take to build financial products normal people can trust and use. At the centre of the conversation is a simple but ambitious idea: crypto was meant to give people more control over their money, but too often it has recreated the same custodial systems it claimed it would replace. From Fund Manager To Founder Before building Superform, Vikram was managing DeFi strategies at BlockTower during one of the most intense periods in crypto’s history. It gave him a clear view of a harder truth: most people in crypto are not actually winning. Speculation brought attention to the space, but it did not create durable outcomes for most participants. Traders chased new coins, NFTs, and perpetual opportunities, yet very few walked away with lasting gains. That realisation shaped Vikram’s transition from trading to building. He stopped trading entirely after leaving the fund and says it was one of the best things he did for his mental health. That shift matters because it reframed what he wanted crypto to do. He was no longer interested in merely surviving cycles. He wanted to help build something useful, something that could turn speculative energy into real financial infrastructure. Why Retail Traders Are Set Up To Lose One of Vikram’s clearest points in the episode is that crypto trading has become much harder for the average person. In earlier years, there were moments when retail traders could find opportunities that institutions missed. Today, he argues, that edge has narrowed sharply. Information is uneven, structural advantages are more concentrated, and many traders are effectively competing against players with better access, better systems, and better timing. “There’s no edge anymore,” he says. “There are people out there that have information that they’re trading against you.” That leads to one of the most practical lessons from the episode. Vikram no longer believes most retail users should be trading at all. His view is that many would be better served by using DeFi for yield and long-term positioning rather than trying to outplay a market that has become structurally harder to beat. It is a much less glamorous answer than the usual crypto promise, but probably a more honest one. The Real Problem: Crypto Rebuilt The Same Old System What makes Vikram interesting is that his critique does not stop at trading. He sees the deeper problem as infrastructural. Banks, in his view, failed people by controlling their money and keeping most of the upside for themselves. Fintech improved the interface, but not the core structure. It made banking feel smoother without changing the fact that users still depended on intermediaries. “Banks have failed us,” he says. “Fintech realised banks had bad UX, but they built the same platform on top of broken infrastructure.” ...