This comment makes me feel so sad. I lack the words to describe what critical essence this question is missing, but technology used to mean a hacker ethos of just doing things because they seemed cool and worth doing and even just the ask of this feels parasitic by comparison. Sign of the times.

I'm gonna drop a sad truth on you: even the greatest hackers of old had to make money somehow.

Eh, I think this falls right into the traditional hacker ethos of doing what seems cool, it's just that what you think is cool may be different than what I think is cool.

I want to make games, but I know how much time that takes, so I understand that to make something cool I need funding to be able to focus on that cool thing. Crypto can be a tool in this case, and I personally would prefer mining to watching ads.

Hackers are great and analyzing systems and figuring out what they might support, despite the original designer's intentions.