Author | Meng Yan
sauce: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qQnpt0RMXC2yO0-sBJfcLw
Disclaimer: This article is a reprint. See the original link for more information. If the author has concerns about the format of the reprint, please contact us. We will adjust it according to your request. This reprint is for information sharing purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice and does not represent the views or position of WuBlockchain.
Over the past two weeks, the “AI bubble” has become the hottest topic in the global tech world. The debate has been so intense that the total market value of the Nasdaq market has already fallen by about 5%, and AI giants such as Nvidia, Meta, and Oracle have fallen by about 10% to 30%. From technology to finance, prominent figures offer polarizing views. At the same time, the cryptocurrency market has been in continuous decline since October 11th, with the industry anxiously discussing whether it has entered a bear market.
Friends asked me what I thought about the AI bubble theory and the bull/bear situation in cryptocurrencies. Frankly, I have no idea. And I don’t really care. AI and cryptocurrencies involve many uncertainties. Will large language models eventually lead to AGI? Are AI companies extending depreciation periods to inflate reported profits? Huge numbers of GPUs Is it sitting idle and “gathering dust”? When will liquidity in the crypto market be restored? These questions may be important to people like Donald Trump, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman, but for ordinary people like me, they don’t need to be resolved in order to make healthy choices. What may be meaningful to industry giants may be just noise to us. Focusing too much on that noise can far more certainly blind you to opportunities.
In today’s media environment, a small elite holds the power to set the agenda and hijack the public’s attention. Ordinary people avoid facing problems that really concern them, even though they struggle in real life. Instead, they worry about what the elite is worried about and put their energy into working on what the elite is working on. It takes real effort to shake off the illusion that you are a capitalist or an industry leader. Always remember that their power and wealth is not ours, and their problems are not ours either. Focusing your attention on the arguments framed by the elites means letting your mind drift into their world, and as a result, you end up missing out on real solid opportunities in your own life.
Most people over 40 have their own stories about how they missed the internet. I often think back to the early 2000s and ask myself why I and so many people around me missed out on the golden moment of joining the Internet wave. In hindsight, the success of the Internet was already a foresaw conclusion in 2002-2003. Internet users have proliferated, average time spent online continues to increase, and information access and commercial transactions have rapidly moved online. What signals could have been clearer? Is there a more certain trend than the success of the Internet? Why haven’t we decided to throw ourselves into it with more conviction?
Those of us who lived through that era know that people didn’t fail to see the signals. Rather, we hesitated, consciously or not, being swept along by wave after wave of argument. Initially, we debated whether there was a viable path to profiting from the Internet. Once Google established advertising as a model, they debated whether there was enough leeway in advertising. When e-commerce emerged, we argued that payments and returns may be an insurmountable flaw in China. As online gaming became more popular, we argued that teenage addiction would ruin the country’s future. When social media and online payments emerged, we debated when the government would step in and take over the table. When Bitcoin was created, we debated whether Satoshi Nakamoto had ties to the CIA and whether Li Xiaolai was just bragging. Throughout, these topics caught our attention and led us to imaginatively cast ourselves in the hands of members of Internet industry associations, officials of “Care for Next Generations” committees, bank presidents, and even advertising/propaganda agencies, law enforcement agencies, and more. Day after day we dawdled, missing the clear and certain successes of the Internet and getting lost in a pile of trivial uncertainties.
Sadly, China’s internet historical record is reportedly being erased at record speed. Even if today’s historians dispatched AI to digital archaeology, I suspect we can hardly imagine how much energy and opportunity costs ordinary bystanders spent discussing other people’s problems back then. Much of the internet history I’ve read focuses almost exclusively on the winners, portraying them as visionary, intelligent, resilient, almost prophet-like, but very few draw lessons for “ordinary people.” Therefore, I would like to pass on that lesson while the memory of our generation is still fresh. Other people’s problems aren’t necessarily your problems. Other people’s signals can become your noise. Don’t get drawn into discussions that don’t concern you. Observe the facts and identify major trends. For the average person, that’s often enough.
Today, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are buzzing about AI. Because virtually all of America’s credit goes into AI, and nearly all of our incremental economic growth comes from AI investments. They are also alert to worrying signs in the industry’s reported earnings and financial behavior. does that matter? yes. Whose problem is it? It belongs to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, maybe the White House and the Federal Reserve, and probably a lot of Asian funds and family offices, but probably not yours. You’re not a Jensen fan, you’re not Sam Altman, you’re not Michael Burry from “The Big Short,” and you’re certainly not someone who has special access to Larry Ellison. There is no need to worry about whether an AI bubble will occur.
What should we care about? We don’t know if large-scale models are the path to AGI, but today’s AI capabilities are already very powerful. In fact, these capabilities have not yet been fully applied and exploited, and the bottleneck lies primarily in people. While we may be treating AI simply as a replacement for search, a group of “AI superusers” are emerging, individuals who can expertly combine AI tools to completely outperform their competitors in their field. Many products in the AI space have recently begun to generate meaningful real revenue, and as AI giants continue to persuade capital to back them, they will likely focus more on growing their user base and usage, and more aggressively incentivizing developers to build tangible applications. The question is whether you can create something in your field of expertise.
In blockchain, the market has become increasingly speculative in recent years, but even amidst the noise, the core infrastructure has largely removed throughput bottlenecks in transaction processing and is now low-latency, high-performance, and sufficient for large-scale on-chain applications. As the largest use case for blockchain, stablecoins continue to expand in scale and scenarios. More importantly, from Wall Street to Hong Kong, an increasing range of traditional financial assets are being tokenized and moved on-chain, including stocks, private and public credit, precious metals, foreign exchange, and derivatives. This shows that the whole of finance is moving to blockchain.
So what is my real question? It’s not about Bitcoin’s short-term price fluctuations, when crypto market liquidity will return after a drawdown, or whether Donald Trump still has the clout to push through crypto legislation. Faced with a clear future, within 3-5 years people will be able to use stablecoins to invest in on-chain global assets and use AI as an investment advisor. The important issues are different. With the right knowledge, skills, and mastery of related tools, ordinary individuals can thrive alongside the world’s most rapidly changing companies and industries. There are no meaningful barriers anymore. Do I have enough knowledge and skills in that new world? Can we help more people escape a fate weighed down by chaos and inflation? What opportunities are there to build valuable products and services?
I keep reminding myself that these are the questions I should really be concerned about.
We also acknowledge that the world is becoming increasingly chaotic and has many dire and worrying problems. Many things that once made long-termism and long-term planning possible have lost their certainty. Like it or not, we are moving down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, moving from an era of striving for success and self-actualization to one where many of us simply have to fight to live with basic dignity. These are probably true. We often find it easier to watch a few short-form videos and have a laugh rather than create even more anxiety. However, even after the dopamine is released, we have to return to real life.
I’m not trying to console you by saying the world will get better. We also believe that it is not necessary to guess everything accurately. It is enough to ensure that things are done correctly and align yourself with deterministic tendencies. Doing so usually yields better results than wasting energy on hesitation and fear, or getting lost in arguments set up by others.
follow us
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain
telegram: https://t.me/wublockchainenglish
