Original Title: Iran Bombing Dubai Forced Me to Confront Tech, Civilization, and Oddly Enough, Crypto-Natives
Original Author: brother bing, MegaETH Co-Founder
Original Translation: BitpushNews
I wrote and published this article after crossing the UAE and Oman border. The crossing took about an hour and the process was very smooth.
In the past 48 hours, I was completely stunned by the technology involved in this war. It was the first time in my life that I witnessed a missile and watched as the interception system destroyed it. I even came across some surreal, geeky, and slightly bizarre details, such as reports of an Israeli hacker infiltrating a prayer app to send messages to Iranians.
I have been in the tech industry, but this was indeed my first experience with a defense system. It gave me a fresh perspective on the relationship between technology and civilization.
Technology may create the illusion that it is "upgrading" civilization, but in fact, it only amplifies the original direction of civilization—much like leveraged trading (don't despair yet!).
Please allow me to explain.
In a healthy cycle of civilizational rise, technology becomes a booster for productivity and a tool for collaboration. The early Internet felt just like that.
I still remember 17 years ago when I applied to American universities in Beijing, the help I received on various forums: strangers sharing advice, essays, and strategies (including how to wisely use early decision admissions). At that time, the concept of closed APIs was unheard of.
But in a downward cycle, technology transforms into something else. It becomes a weapon of attention (sometimes even a real weapon!).
My 60-year-old parents are more addicted to doomsday scrolling than I am (many of my millennial friends are very worried about our parents). The same Internet that once brought us open knowledge is now feeding algorithmic addiction.
This framework explains the internal tension felt by today’s crypto natives. It seems that cryptocurrency was invented for the very world we live in now, yet everyone feels disappointed.
So, what exactly happened?
I don’t want to repeat the clichés that many OGs in the circle have already written about "forgetting the cyberpunk spirit" or "getting too close to traditional finance (TradFi)," but I want to offer two ideas:
Cryptocurrency should never have been just an asset class. As Evgeny wrote in "Golden Path," cryptocurrency was meant to be a parallel system, a way to restructure finance with fewer boundaries, lower collaboration costs, and flexible exit mechanisms.
Then, things changed. Legitimacy was presented to us and came almost too easily. And once people tasted the flavor of legitimacy, they wanted more.
Technology, as an amplifier, naturally seeks the path of least resistance, which is: integrating with existing power structures to further gain this legitimacy.
It needs to be clear that bringing institutions into blockchain infrastructure is not inherently wrong.
But in the process, we quietly abandoned many old dreams. I find myself increasingly returning to those early use cases: small-scale fully collateralized/under-collateralized loan experiments, Tontine-like (pension) structures, and even better cross-border savings and exchanges.
These use cases are too boring. They don’t make headlines, let alone generate token hype. In the race for attention maximization and valuation, these niche but structurally significant ideas have been marginalized.
Stablecoins perfectly embody this paradox. They make the case for "Internet currency," but often merely serve as a more user-friendly "packaging" of sovereign currencies, rather than a structurally independent monetary system.
By the way, Mega certainly shares some responsibility. We have a long way to go.
In my view, many of the successes today should be called "blockchain" rather than "crypto." If the goal is to act as middleware for traditional finance, that’s fine. But let’s honestly acknowledge that. Backend integration ≠ reinventing.
Enough, the price has never been the reason for everyone’s disappointment. A sad reality is that, between "what we can build" and "what we choose to build," we chose the wrong direction.
Back to the original question: what does this war tell the crypto community?
If we broaden our perspective, civilization indeed has its cycles. As a Chinese person, I learned about the changes of dynasties from a young age. But in all those stories of emperors, generals, and rebels, what ultimately shines is individual agency.
I don’t know how else to say it, but the crypto native generation will not win simply because they are liked.
We initially achieved some success because we continually identified the shortcomings of the old system and openly criticized them. Then somehow, every dissenting voice was silenced in the process.
In a downward cycle, it is easy for technology to amplify financialization, manipulation, and superficial growth. However, using it to quietly build mundane infrastructure that can extend real sovereignty is much harder.
But developers can still choose which incentive mechanisms to code. Founders can still decide which use cases to prioritize. More importantly, the community can still choose which values to defend.
If social sentiment drifts toward insecurity and the search for validation, technology will amplify that insecurity. But if a sufficient number of people consciously anchor themselves in long-term structures, anchoring in collaborative tools rather than attention traps, perhaps leverage can still be our ally.
Many friends disagreed with my cross-border trip to Oman; they said the border is unpredictable and chaotic, advising me to stay in Dubai. Dubai is indeed comfortable. But without verifying it in person, I would never know if those claims were true or false. The result was that the border was quiet, with few people and a smooth process.
The broader world environment is not favorable to us, but in the long run, it may work in our favor.
For us in the crypto community, it is never too late to reposition ourselves, verify things personally, choose the right path, and in the most cliched way, carve out a parallel path.
As my favorite YouTuber says: you can have a very sharp knife, but if the person holding the knife is a coward, nothing will happen. Let’s sharpen our blades. Let’s not be cowards.
Proof complete (QED).
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