Author: Fang Dao

When AI and cryptocurrency are mentioned simultaneously, many people instinctively feel a sense of distance. This is not due to a lack of understanding of the technology, but rather a more direct physical sensation: this transformation seems to be gradually marginalizing ordinary individuals from the "core asset balance sheets." This sense of "irrelevance" is not an illusion, but rather a necessary outcome that is closer to a structural shift in technological paradigms.

In the past, each wave of technological innovation reserved clear ecological niches for ordinary people. The internet era corresponded to website building and content distribution, while the early days of cryptocurrency corresponded to mining and liquidity provision. As long as one is willing to bear the time costs or risks, the path is visible and the returns can be imagined. However, the combination of AI and cryptocurrency is changing this situation. AI endows software with autonomy, and cryptocurrency provides ownership structures for software; together they form "Agentic Entities": driven by code, coordinated by tokens, and capable of self-operating and profiting within a closed loop. In this process, the intermediate operational roles once borne by humans are gradually being consumed by algorithms, and the system's operation is no longer dependent on large-scale individual participation, hence the path begins to narrow.

The past cryptocurrency market was essentially an "opportunity market." Price fluctuations meant that opportunities existed, and price increases themselves were reasons to participate. However, after the entry of AI, the market is shifting to another structure. Transactions are increasingly dominated by high-frequency algorithms and agents, and emotion-driven spaces are being compressed; computing power, data, and network effects have become core assets, placing the barriers to early entry at a significantly higher level. The entities that can undertake this structural value are often large capital or a few builders. For ordinary individuals, "participation" is no longer equivalent to "earning profit," and the more stable the system becomes, the narrower the path appears.

This change is further reflected in the rewriting of the basic unit of "company." AI and cryptocurrency are changing the minimal structure of companies. Future companies will no longer rely on traditional human organizations but may be driven by a set of sustainably operating protocols: execution completed by agents, coordination achieved through token mechanisms, and profits automatically distributed by code. In such a structure, participants gradually converge into three categories: builders who master model and protocol design, capital parties that can provide computing power and resources, and the system itself that extracts profits automatically through rules. Ordinary individuals neither master the structure nor can easily participate in the underlying resource allocation, rendering their position naturally ambiguous.

This essence of "irrelevance" lies in the fact that technology is being infrastructural. AI and cryptocurrency are not drifting away from ordinary people; they are merely sinking down to become underlying existences like electricity and network protocols. Once this stage is reached, the distribution logic changes accordingly: technology no longer distributes dividends in the form of "opportunities," but solidifies structure more in the form of "efficiency."

This may imply a fact that is not easily accepted: when a technology truly begins to change the world, it often ceases to be a mining field that everyone can participate in, but rather resembles a stable operating system. The roles of ordinary people within it also change, shifting from participants to users, from those directly creating value to those providing data and demand to the system.

Technology is still accelerating, but the "participation dividend period" belonging to individuals may be gradually converging through structural adjustments.

References

EigenCloud / Sreeram Kannan

Digital Asset Summit 2026

Market Structure Analysis

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