Author: Golem (@web 3_golem)

On February 27, when a user asked OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger for "the best advice for a 20-year-old" on the X platform, Peter Steinberger bluntly stated, "Don’t waste time on cryptocurrency." As the founder of one of today's hottest AI products, Peter Steinberger has not hidden his disdain for cryptocurrency. He has warned cryptocurrency practitioners not to harass him, and even users mentioning Bitcoin in OpenClaw's Discord would be banned.

This harsh statement has sparked a collective playfulness and self-deprecation in the crypto community. However, unlike the market's downturn and the cryptocurrency practitioners shouting "crypto is dead," when "don't waste time on cryptocurrency" is presented as advice from a top AI entrepreneur to young people, the words still sting the cryptocurrency industry.

It puts the anxiety before us—crypto is no longer the optimal solution for the youth of the current era.

Looking back to 2011, OG of the crypto circle and founder of Babbit, Chang Jia, suggested college students to invest all 6000 yuan in Bitcoin. This response was considered one of the strongest examples of long-termism in the crypto industry, suitable for the youth. However, Chang Jia himself has not remained steadfast in the crypto industry; Babbit ceased publishing cryptocurrency-related information in 2023 and shifted to content in AI, the metaverse, and other fields, and after turning to AI entrepreneurship in 2024, Chang Jia completely disappeared from the crypto circle.

Chang Jia, who was ahead of the curve, sparked much controversy, and now the siphoning of the crypto circle by AI has become an undeniable fact. Talent is migrating, capital is reallocating, and attention is turning.

Talent Migration: OGs Start Becoming AI Bloggers

Another OG in the crypto circle, Shen Yu, co-founder and CEO of Cobo, is also one of the early Bitcoin mining representatives. As a survivor through multiple cycles, Shen Yu typically shares his personal understanding of market phases and investment insights on social media, earning considerable popularity in the crypto community.

However, recently, Shen Yu has transformed from a crypto OG into an AI blogger, with over 80% of his social media content in the past month being about OpenClaw, and very little related to cryptocurrency. Shen Yu has even joked about his successful transformation.

Shen Yu’s exploration and focus on AI remain at a personal level; his company's business and personal career still primarily revolve around cryptocurrency. Therefore, we can interpret Shen Yu's obsession with AI as a good habit of actively self-improvement and keeping up with the cutting edge during "market downtime." However, the talent migration from crypto to AI is indeed happening.

An executive at zkSync, Anthony Rose, announced on February 4 that he would leave Matter Labs after four years and is likely to shift to AI. EigenLayer's developer advocacy director Nader Dabit also announced on February 5 that he would exit EigenLayer to work as a growth director at an AI company, stating he "joined the future."

The most attention-grabbing recent exit example is Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, who announced he was leaving the crypto world to focus on AI, robotics, and other fields. Kyle Samani is known for his early investment in Solana, so his exit has dealt a blow to confidence in the crypto space. Even more outrageous, on the day Kyle Samani exited, he belittled the cryptocurrency industry, stating, "Cryptocurrency is not as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined."

Recommended reading:《Kyle Samani's Exit: Another Hidden Agenda?》

Capital Migration: Native Crypto VCs Start Allocating to AI

Native crypto VCs are also unwilling to waste more time in the crypto industry.

On February 28, The Wall Street Journal reported that crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is planning to raise a new fund focused on AI and robotics, potentially reaching up to $1.5 billion. Paradigm is one of the purest native crypto capitals, which gained fame in 2019 by investing in and incubating Uniswap. Following that, other early investments in crypto projects (such as Lido, Optimism, dYdX, and Blur) have also been successful, making this research-driven VC a peer to a16z crypto.

Because of this, Paradigm's shift this time is significant.

If crypto were still in a period of rapid innovation, continuously generating projects capable of holding billion-dollar investments, Paradigm would have no need to set up a separate heavy fund for AI. But the reality is that the narrative around crypto infrastructure (such as L1, L2, DEX, etc.) has become highly competitive, and the number of truly valuable early projects that can achieve a "paradigm shift" is exceedingly small.

The entire crypto VC landscape has run out of good projects to invest in. From data perspectives, it has become more evident that the number of venture rounds in the crypto industry has been declining year by year; in 2022, there were 1,639 financing rounds in the crypto primary market, which decreased to 829 rounds in 2025, with early financing's share dropping from 50% to below 35%.

Source: What Can Be Traded in the Crypto Market a Year Later?

When there’s nothing left to invest in the crypto industry, AI, as a booming industry, naturally becomes the best target for crypto capital. From foundational large models to AI agents, from computing power chips to the robotics industry, AI can not only accommodate capital scale but also continually create growth stories, making it the largest reservoir of global capital today.

For a VC managing over $12.7 billion in assets, the core question has never been whether "belief has wavered," but rather whether the "return function still holds." When the number of investable projects in the crypto industry declines, a singular focus on crypto means an increase in portfolio risk and a decrease in yield elasticity. In this scenario, persisting with a "crypto-native" strategy becomes irrational.

Thus, Paradigm’s active expansion into AI is also compelled by the trend of the times. This is not just a strategic issue for individual firms, but a signal of the industry phase.

Attention Migration: When Crypto Players Become Obsessed with AI

In terms of market attention, crypto is an industry that is most adept at riding trends, whether it be political hotspots, technological frontiers, or social headlines; there's always a hot project or meme related to it in the crypto circle. In the past, every time the AI industry experienced a technological upgrade or product innovation, the crypto circle would have "Crypto+AI" projects or meme coins hype to attract market attention.

After OpenClaw became popular, while the crypto circle was quick to look for angles to ride the wave, such as hyping a similarly named meme coin, instructing OpenClaw to self-trade tokens, and betting on prediction markets for profit, crypto players gradually became purer, shifting from "how to crypto-enable OpenClaw" to "how to truly use OpenClaw."

Many crypto researchers began to continuously output installation and usage tutorials for OpenClaw, publicly sharing their AI workflows, and some even detailed how to train a personal AI agent to help write code, conduct investment research, and generate content. Some crypto KOLs even ventured into a side business charging newcomers to install OpenClaw.

Offline AI exchange events organized by the crypto circle are also "full of guests." The most popular recent offline event is the "Web4 China Tour" promoted by crypto OG Kong Jianping, which will run from February 25 to March 8, taking place offline in five cities in China, with the main topics being OpenClaw and agents, almost devoid of any crypto-related content.

This is no longer just riding a trend, but a true shift in attention; self-professed progressive thinkers in the crypto community have begun to fear lagging behind in the AI era.

The crypto circle's AI offline event was packed.

Why are cryptocurrency practitioners so obsessed with AI?

The crypto circle is inherently the industry with the highest concentration of "super individuals," comprising numerous independent developers, traders, and content creators, all of whom naturally seek to improve tool efficiency to compensate for human productivity deficiencies. Therefore, when AI can significantly amplify individual productivity, crypto players are sure to be among the first to embrace it.

Moreover, the core of crypto culture itself has a strong geek spirit and tech worship. Although the "tech narrative" has been diluted in recent years, the majority of crypto players still believe "underlying technology can change the world," and today, AI possesses more revolutionary tech qualities than blockchain, thus naturally attracting feverish enthusiasm from crypto players.

Of course, a more realistic reason is the crypto market's downtime; AI continues to create "new things," while crypto has been reassembling old narratives. Without native crypto innovation and significant wealth effects, the entire crypto circle is left with just a bit of externality generated through prediction markets and RWA. In this context, the new discussion topics and cognitive stimuli offered by the AI industry fill a spiritual void for crypto players in a slowing market.

It's Time to Discuss Things Beyond Crypto and AI

Finally, returning to the opening of this article, the reason why the statement from the OpenClaw founder attracted attention in the crypto circle is not due to contempt, but because it speaks to a fact that many in the crypto space are quietly validating with their actions—most intelligent people are reallocating their time.

We are currently facing a period of declining wealth generation rates and explosive technological productivity.

On one hand, as the crypto cycle slows, alpha contracts, and the wealth growth curve flattens, crypto players' past year of merely relying on “information brushing—chasing trends—speculating for profit” is showing diminishing marginal returns; on the other hand, AI is compressing the "time needed to solve problems," with tasks like coding and content creation that previously demanded considerable time now being accomplished by models within minutes, far surpassing individual efficiency.

When the "quantitative process of pursuing results" is highly condensed by AI, perhaps we are left with more free time to engage in activities that are not driven by efficiency and profit—seeking "carbon-based meaning," experiencing the world, establishing cognitive systems independent of market fluctuations, and constructing our own value coordinates.

In the future of AI, the real gap between people may lie in aesthetics, independent judgment, and the construction of personal meaning.

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