Are there fewer young talents in the encryption industry?

Author: Leon Abboud

Compiled by: White55, Mars Finance

The cryptocurrency industry is handing over young talent to other fields, such as artificial intelligence (AI). This phenomenon is a heavy blow to the future of the industry.

When young talents begin to look towards other industries for opportunities, this situation is similar to the phenomenon of youth in a country leaving their hometowns in pursuit of better development prospects.

You have lost those minds that should have driven future development.

Economists refer to this phenomenon as “Brain Drain.”

I grew up in Lebanon, a country that suffers greatly from “brain drain.” Almost everyone I know who had the opportunity to study abroad left without hesitation. And the result? Not a single person came back.

They all stayed abroad, where they started businesses, developed their careers, and started families.

All the talents that could have built the nation have been lost forever.

Such problems are currently unfolding in the cryptocurrency industry.

We are channeling talent into industries like artificial intelligence (AI). The reason is not that these industries offer higher salaries, but because they tell a more compelling story.

Recent graduates often seek a story rather than just a salary. Young people are filled with passion and vitality; they want to build their careers in an industry that can shape the future.

And this used to be the story of the crypto industry. In the last cycle, the crypto industry had a completely different narrative: privacy, self-sovereignty, anti-censorship, the future of finance…

These ideas have attracted a group of eager minds who wish to be part of this story.

But now, we are losing this narrative and the unique identity that makes this industry special.

At the same time, AI is providing young people with the stories they crave.

AI tells young people that they can redefine the way humans think, work, create, and communicate. They can develop tools that change civilization…

However, the cryptocurrency industry is drifting in a completely different direction. Its mission has become unclear.

This industry has gradually lost the feeling of “movement” and instead resembles the lobby of the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas.

Today, few people can tell a story that makes a 22-year-old feel the call of adventure.

We once had such a story, but later we became a casino, a huge online casino.

Casinos do not incentivize talent; they only attract tourists. It is important to note that casino-like behavior is not the root of the problem; it is merely a symptom.

We lost our own story and thus became a casino, rather than the other way around.

Young talents are flocking to AI not because it is morally superior, but because it feels extraordinarily meaningful. It makes people feel that they are part of a greater cause, history is being written in real-time, and anyone can pick up a pen to write a part of it.

The cryptocurrency industry used to give people this feeling, but it is no longer the case.

However, the good news is that stories are not set in stone; they can be rewritten.

The revival of the crypto industry will not be written by institutions, ETFs, or billion-dollar foundations, but by people like you and me who truly shape this field.

It is us, these young, dedicated, and imaginative minds.

If we want this industry to have a prosperous future, we need to make this field more attractive to young people. To achieve this, we must provide them with a story worth crossing the ocean for.

Here, I present a brand new story:

Crypto Twitter Lost Direction

Crypto Twitter has lost its sense of direction. The energy that once brought us together is dissipating as the shared narrative that supported us has vanished.

In the past, this was a community connected by the shared values of “early participants,” “rebels,” and “misunderstood individuals,” but now it has slid into endless mediocrity.

Standards are declining as interests replace missions. Many people are starting to attract attention by creating dramatic conflicts and spreading fake news, even calling this behavior 'culture'.

Some people have turned their accounts into “traffic farms,” where content creators hire so-called “reply armies” to create interactions, pretending that no one will notice. Everyone is “ranking up” in the most obvious ways, and the worst part is that we all pretend this is normal.

The root of all this lies in the fact that crypto Twitter, as a community, has lost the story that once held it together.

The window of opportunity is still open, but it won't be so forever.

The Identity Crisis of Encrypted Twitter

Anyone active on Crypto Twitter may have noticed that the culture in this industry is rapidly deteriorating lately. There are two main reasons behind this.

The first reason is the excessive incentive mechanism in the industry; but the deeper reason is that crypto Twitter has lost the story it used to tell itself.

Before this bull market, the core of Crypto Twitter was a group of people who considered themselves “early adopters.” They saw themselves as rebels, standing at the forefront of a misunderstood frontier industry.

This group of people is able to see the potential of NFTs while the whole world considers them a scam. It is precisely because these people make up the main body of crypto Twitter that a unique culture has formed here— the culture of rebels, the culture of early builders, a culture that believes they are shaping the future of the internet.

However, in this round of bull market, this rebellious industry culture has gradually disappeared.

When institutions start investing billions of dollars, participating in the crypto industry or working within it is no longer a symbol of rebellion.

When even the President of the United States starts issuing memecoins, and my uncle invests in it with ETFs, we have lost our identity as “rebels” and are no longer a “different” group.

As a result, Crypto Twitter has also lost its identity.

Every community needs to reshape itself.

In order to survive, Crypto Twitter needs a new narrative; it needs to redefine itself. Just like Apple — in the 1980s, Apple was a product made for rebels, but as it gradually moved into the mainstream, it had to reshape its image, no longer just catering to rebels, as it was no longer that niche brand.

Apple has repositioned itself as “a creative guardian against convention.” Even though it has become an industry giant, “Think Different” remains its new slogan.

Each community has undergone a transformation by replacing old myths and stories with new ones, and this is the reality that crypto Twitter must face. We are no longer 'early adopters' or 'rebels'; we need a new narrative.

When you think about the impact of the crypto industry, whether it's the memecoins, Bitcoin, institutional investment, and the infiltration of mainstream culture in this bull market, or the NFTs, Bored Apes, and celebrity participation in the previous bull market, one thing we can agree on is that the crypto industry knows how to create culture.

We stand at the forefront of the internet, at the forefront of technology. We have witnessed many native founders and creators of cryptocurrencies move into the mainstream, as well as the most mainstream stars launching their own projects through the crypto industry.

The cryptocurrency industry is a bridge to culture, and this is an undeniable fact. One narrative that we can all agree on is: we are the manufacturing factory of culture.

We need a new “enemy” to fight.

No community can survive without common enemies. For Crypto Twitter, our past “enemies” have been the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government, and those institutions that seek to ban us and deprive us of our work and livelihoods.

However, today these “enemies” have been defeated and even joined our ranks. We have lost external opponents, so we began to engage in internal strife, turning to attack each other.

We need a new “enemy” to fight against. While I cannot provide a definitive answer at the moment, I believe that crypto Twitter can fight to save the internet — against the “Dead Internet Theory.” The internet is gradually declining, and soon the comment sections will become unusable, with the public internet being flooded by a multitude of bots.

Cryptography and NFTs are the only solutions to this problem. This is a “villain” I can imagine, and it is a target that our entire industry can unite against.

The only way for Crypto Twitter is to write a brand new story for ourselves - a story that all of us believe in, and to steadfastly promote it before others believe in it. This story may seem crazy at first, but our task is to prove to the world that it is not.

So, I ask you again: what is our new story?

Before finding this answer, encrypted Twitter is destined to continue its descent into collapse.