Original article | Odaily Odaily( @OdailyChina )
Author｜Golem ( @web3_golem )
On February 27th, when a user asked Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw, on the X platform for "the best advice for a 20-year-old," Steinberger bluntly stated, "Don't waste your time on cryptocurrency." As the founder of one of the hottest AI products currently available, Steinberger has made no secret of his aversion to cryptocurrency. He has warned cryptocurrency practitioners against harassing him, and even mentioning Bitcoin in OpenClaw's Discord can result in being banned .
This harsh remark sparked a wave of memes and self-deprecating humor within the crypto community. However, unlike the market downturn and crypto professionals chanting "crypto is dead," the statement "Don't waste your time on cryptocurrency" as advice given to young people by a top AI entrepreneur still stung the crypto industry.
It presents us with anxieties—encryption is no longer the optimal solution for young people in this era.
Back in 2011, Chang Jia, a crypto OG and founder of Babbitt, advised college students to invest all their 6,000 yuan in Bitcoin. This suggestion was considered one of the most compelling examples of the crypto industry's long-term vision and its suitability for young people. However, Chang Jia himself did not remain committed to the crypto industry. By 2023, Babbitt had stopped publishing cryptocurrency-related information and shifted its focus to AI, the metaverse, and other related fields. In 2024, after Chang Jia started his own AI business, he completely disappeared from the crypto scene.
Long-range AI, which once excelled in its early development, has attracted much controversy, but now it's an undeniable fact that the crypto world is being siphoned off by AI. Talent is migrating, capital is being reallocated, and attention is shifting.
Talent Migration: OGs Begin to Become AI Bloggers
Another crypto OG, Shenyu, co-founder and CEO of Cobo, is also one of the early representatives of the Bitcoin mining community. As a survivor of multiple cycles, Shenyu often shares his understanding of market phases and investment insights on social media, which is quite popular in the crypto community.
However, Shenyu has recently transformed from a crypto OG into an AI blogger. In the past month, more than 80% of the content on his social media accounts has been about OpenClaw, while there is very little content related to crypto. Shenyu himself jokingly said that he has successfully transformed himself.
Shenyu's exploration and focus on AI remain at the personal level; his company's business and personal career are still primarily focused on encryption. Therefore, we can tentatively interpret Shenyu's obsession with AI as a good habit of actively improving himself and keeping up with the times during "market downtime." However, the migration of talent from encryption to AI is also a real phenomenon.
On February 4, Anthony Rose, an executive at zkSync, announced that he would be leaving Matter Labs after four years and would most likely move to AI; Nader Dabit, the director of developer advocacy at EigenLayer, also announced on February 5 that he was leaving EigenLayer to become the head of growth at an AI company, saying that he had "joined the future".
The most notable recent example of someone leaving the crypto space is Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, who announced his departure to focus on AI, robotics, and other related fields. Known for his early bets on Solana, Samani's exit dealt a blow to confidence within the crypto community. Even more absurdly, on the day of his departure, Samani disparaged the crypto industry, stating that "cryptocurrency is not as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined."
Recommended reading: " Kyle Samani's retirement: Is there more to it than meets the eye? "
Capital Migration: Native Crypto VCs Begin to Invest in AI
Native crypto VCs are also unwilling to waste more time on the crypto industry.
On February 28, according to the Wall Street Journal, crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is planning to raise a new fund focused on AI and robotics, with a maximum size of approximately $1.5 billion. Paradigm is one of the purest crypto-native capital firms, gaining fame in 2019 for its investment in and incubation of Uniswap. Its early investments in other crypto projects (such as Lido, Optimism, dYdX, and Blur) have also been successful, making this "research-driven" VC a name comparable to a16z crypto.
That is why Paradigm's turn is so significant.
If crypto were still in a period of rapid innovation, continuously generating projects capable of supporting billion-dollar investments, Paradigm wouldn't need to establish a separate, heavily weighted fund for AI. However, the reality is that the crypto industry's infrastructure narrative (such as L1, L2, and DEX) is already highly competitive, and the number of truly high-quality early-stage projects capable of a "paradigm leap" is extremely limited.
There are simply no good projects left for crypto VCs to invest in. The data makes this even clearer: the number of venture capital deals in the crypto industry has been declining year by year over the past four years. In 2022, there were 1,639 crypto primary market financing deals, which dropped to 829 in 2025. The proportion of early-stage financing also fell from 50% to below 35%.
Source: What will still be traded in the crypto market a year from now?
With limited investment opportunities in the crypto industry, AI, as a booming sector, naturally becomes the best place for crypto capital to be invested. From basic big data models to AI agents, from computing chips to the robotics industry, AI can not only support large-scale capital investment but also continuously generate growth stories, making it the world's largest reservoir of capital today.
For a VC managing over $12.7 billion in assets, the core question has never been "whether the faith has wavered," but rather "whether the return function still holds true." When the number of projects the crypto industry can support decreases, betting solely on crypto means increased portfolio risk and reduced return elasticity. In this situation, continuing to insist on "crypto-native" strategies is irrational.
Therefore, Paradigm's proactive expansion into AI is also driven by the trend of the times. This is not a strategic issue of an individual institution, but a signal of the stage of the industry.
Attention Shift: When Crypto Players Become Obsessed with AI
In terms of market attention, crypto is the industry most adept at capitalizing on trends. Whether it's political hot topics, cutting-edge technology, or social headlines, any trending topic will inevitably generate hype in the crypto world for related projects or memes. In the past, every time the AI industry experienced a technological upgrade or product innovation, the crypto world would see related "Crypto+AI" projects or meme coins hyped up to attract market attention.
When OpenClaw became popular, the crypto community immediately tried to capitalize on it, such as hyping up the name Meme coin, ordering OpenClaw to trade tokens on its own, and making money by betting on prediction markets. However, crypto players later began to focus on something more, shifting from "how to encrypt OpenClaw" to "how to actually use OpenClaw".
Many crypto researchers have started to continuously publish installation and usage tutorials for OpenClaw, publicly sharing their AI workflows, and even going so far as to detail how to train a personal AI agent to help with coding, investment research, and content generation. Some crypto KOLs have even started a side business of charging beginners to install OpenClaw.
Offline AI exchange events organized by the crypto community are also packed with attendees. The most popular offline event recently is the "Web4 China Tour" promoted by crypto OG Kong Jianping. The event ran from February 25 to March 8, taking place offline in five Chinese cities. The main topics were OpenClaw and Agents, with almost no crypto-related content.
This is no longer just riding the wave of a trend; it's a genuine shift in attention. Crypto enthusiasts who pride themselves on their progressive thinking are starting to fear falling behind in the AI era.
The offline event for AI in the crypto community was packed to capacity.
Why are crypto professionals so obsessed with AI?
The crypto community is the industry with the highest concentration of "super individuals," with a large number of independent developers, traders, and content creators. These people naturally seek to improve the efficiency of tools to compensate for the shortcomings of human efficiency. Therefore, when AI can significantly amplify personal productivity, crypto players will be among the first to embrace it.
Furthermore, the core of crypto culture is imbued with a strong geek spirit and a worship of technology. Although the "technology narrative" has been downplayed in recent years, most crypto enthusiasts still believe that "underlying technologies can change the world," and AI now possesses a more revolutionary technological character than blockchain, thus naturally attracting a frenzy of attention from crypto players.
Of course, a more realistic reason is the crypto market's lull. AI is constantly creating "new things," while crypto is just repackaging old narratives . Without native crypto innovation and significant wealth effects, the entire crypto community is barely hanging on, relying on prediction markets and the meager externalities brought by RWA. At this time, the new discussion topics and cognitive stimulation provided by the AI industry are less about grabbing crypto attention and more about filling the spiritual void left by crypto players after the market slowed down.
Let's talk about something other than encryption and AI.
Finally, returning to the beginning of this article, the reason why the statement made by the founder of OpenClaw has attracted attention in the crypto community is not because it is contemptuous, but because it speaks to a fact that many crypto enthusiasts are quietly verifying through their actions—the smartest people are redistributing their time.
We are now facing a period of declining wealth generation rates and an explosion in technological productivity.
On the one hand, as the crypto cycle slows down, alpha shrinks, and the wealth growth curve flattens, the marginal returns for crypto players who have relied solely on passively "following information, chasing trends, and seeking profits" over the past year are diminishing. On the other hand, AI is compressing the "time people need to solve problems." Many tasks that used to require a lot of time, such as writing code and creating content, can now be completed by models in minutes, making their problem-solving efficiency far superior to that of individuals.
When the "process of pursuing results" is highly condensed by AI, we may actually have more free time to do things that are not aimed at efficiency and making money—to find "carbon-based meaning," to experience the world, to build a cognitive system independent of market fluctuations, and to construct our own value coordinates.
In the future of AI, what will truly differentiate people may be their aesthetic sense, independent judgment, and the construction of personal meaning.
