AI bubble and crypto bear market—these are all just noise
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
AI bubble and crypto bear market—these are all just noise
We don't need to get everything right; we just need to get the certain things right and把握住 the trends that are certain.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOriginal author: Meng Yan's Blockchain Thoughts
In the past two weeks, "AI bubble" has become the hottest topic in tech circles overseas. The debate is intense and has directly caused a 5% drop in the total market cap of Nasdaq, with leading AI companies such as Nvidia, Meta, and Oracle seeing their valuations decline by 10–30%. From the tech world to finance, many public figures have voiced sharp, opposing views, engaging in heated arguments. Meanwhile, the Crypto market has also seen continuous declines since October 11, with the entire industry anxiously debating whether it has already entered a bear market.
I've inevitably been asked by friends about my thoughts on the AI bubble theory and the crypto bull/bear cycle. Honestly, I don't know—and I don't really care. Whether it's AI or crypto, there are indeed many uncertainties. Can large models lead to AGI? Are AI companies inflating profits by extending depreciation periods? Are vast numbers of GPUs sitting idle and collecting dust? When will liquidity return to the crypto market? These issues certainly matter to people like Trump, Jensen Huang, Musk, or Altman—but for ordinary individuals like me, solving these questions isn't necessary to make sound decisions. Debates critical to industry titans may simply be noise to us. Focusing too much on such noise can blind us to opportunities that are truly certain.
In today's media environment, a small elite controls the agenda-setting power and hijacks public attention. Ordinary people, struggling in real life, often neglect their own pressing concerns and instead invest enormous energy into worrying about what elites worry about. You must work extremely hard to break free from the illusion that you're a financial magnate or industry leader, to constantly remind yourself that their power and wealth aren't yours, and their problems aren't yours either. Spending your attention on debates framed by the elite means letting your mind wander in their world—causing you to miss genuinely certain opportunities in real life.
Most people over forty have their own story of missing the internet wave. I often reflect on the early 2000s—why did I and so many around me miss the best opportunity to join the internet revolution? In hindsight, the success of the internet was a victory declared in advance: rapid growth in the number of users, steadily increasing average online time, and the swift migration of information access and commerce online. Could there have been a clearer signal? Could there have been a more certain trend than the rise of the internet? Why didn’t we realize then that we should fully commit ourselves?
The truth is, anyone who lived through that era knows most people weren’t blind to these signals—they were simply caught, consciously or unconsciously, in wave after wave of debates, hesitating and paralyzed. At first, we argued over whether the internet had any viable business model at all. Once Google established advertising as a profitable model, we debated whether advertising could scale sufficiently. When e-commerce emerged, we questioned whether payment and returns would forever be China’s Achilles’ heel. With online gaming rising, we worried it would ruin the future of our youth. When social media and mobile payments appeared, we speculated when the government would crack down. When Bitcoin was born, we debated whether Satoshi Nakamoto was CIA or if Li Xiaolai was just hyping things. Throughout, these topics captured our attention, causing us to mentally cast ourselves as members of internet associations, youth protection committees, bank executives, or even propaganda and law enforcement officials—constantly indecisive, blind to the obvious certainty of the internet’s success, lost instead in a sea of irrelevant uncertainties.
Unfortunately, it's said that records of Chinese internet history are being erased at a record pace. I suspect even historians sending AI to dig through digital ruins won’t grasp how much effort and opportunity cost ordinary netizens wasted arguing over other people’s problems. I’ve already seen many accounts of internet history—almost exclusively focused on winners, portraying them as visionary, brilliant, resilient, and farsighted—yet hardly anyone summarizes the lessons of the "ordinary people." So while our generation’s memory is still fresh, I want to state this lesson clearly: Other people’s problems aren’t necessarily yours; their signals might be your noise. Don’t get drawn into debates that don’t belong to you. Just observe facts, and use them to identify certain, overarching trends. For ordinary people, that’s often enough.
Wall Street and Silicon Valley are making a huge fuss about AI today because nearly all credit resources in the U.S. are now funneled into AI, and almost all economic growth stems from AI investments—and because revenue data and financial behaviors in the AI sector are now showing some worrying signs. Is this an issue? Yes. But whose issue is it? It’s Wall Street’s and Silicon Valley’s problem—possibly also the White House’s and the Fed’s, maybe even Asian funds and family offices’. But it’s probably not your problem. You’re not Jensen Huang, not Sam Altman, not Michael Burry, nor Larry Ellison’s brother-in-law in China. Whether there’s an AI bubble isn’t something you need to lose sleep over.
What should you care about? We may not know whether large models are the path to AGI, but AI capabilities today are already very strong. In fact, these capabilities are far from being fully utilized—the bottleneck lies mostly with people. A new group of "AI super users" is emerging, skillfully combining various AI tools to dominate their fields. Are you still only using AI as a search replacement? Recently, products across many AI sub-sectors have generated solid real-world revenues. And AI giants, needing to convince capital to keep funding them, will increasingly push user adoption and usage growth, actively incentivizing developers of practical applications. Can you create something meaningful in your area of expertise?
In blockchain, despite years of growing speculation, amid all the noise, blockchain infrastructure has largely overcome performance bottlenecks in transaction processing, now capable of supporting low-latency, high-performance, large-scale on-chain applications. Stablecoins—the largest category of blockchain applications—continue to grow in scale and expand into new use cases. More importantly, from Wall Street to Hong Kong, an increasing number of traditional financial assets—stocks, equity, bonds, precious metals, foreign exchange, derivatives—are being tokenized and moved onto blockchains. This means the entire financial system is migrating to blockchain. So what are my real questions? Not about short-term Bitcoin price fluctuations, nor when crypto market liquidity will recover after collapse, nor whether Trump still has enough influence to push crypto legislation. My real question is this clear vision of the future: In three to five years, people will use stablecoins to invest in global assets on blockchain, with AI serving as their personal investment advisor. With the right knowledge and skills, and mastery of relevant tools, ordinary individuals can grow alongside the world’s fastest-moving companies and industries, unimpeded by any barrier. In this new world, do I possess sufficient knowledge and skills? Can I help more people escape the fate of being exploited by chaos and inflation? What opportunities do I have to build valuable products and services?
I will keep reminding myself: These are the questions I should truly care about.
I admit, the world is becoming increasingly chaotic, filled with troubling and distressing issues. Many things that once allowed long-term planning and thinking now lack certainty. Whether we like it or not, we are descending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—from an era of pursuing success and self-actualization toward one where many must fight desperately just for a decent life. That’s probably true. Often, we feel it’s better to avoid added anxiety and just watch a few short videos to relax. But after the dopamine rush, we still have to face real life. I’m not trying to comfort everyone by saying the world will keep getting better. But I do believe we don’t need to be right about everything—just getting the certain things right and catching the certain trends is enough. Compared to wasting energy on hesitation, fear, and losing ourselves in other people’s agendas, this approach will always leave us in a better place.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Yan Meng
