Casinos do not inspire talent; they only attract tourists.

Author: Leon Abboud

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

The crypto 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 talent begins to look to other industries for opportunities, it mirrors the phenomenon of a country's youth leaving their hometowns in pursuit of better prospects.

You lose those minds that should be driving future development.

Economists refer to this phenomenon as "Brain Drain."

I grew up in Lebanon, a country deeply afflicted by "Brain Drain." Anyone I know who had the opportunity to study abroad left without hesitation. And the result? Not a single one has returned.

They all stayed abroad, starting businesses, developing careers, and building families.

All the intellect that could have built the nation has been lost forever.

And this issue is now playing out in the crypto industry.

We are funneling 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.

Young graduates often seek a story rather than a paycheck. Young people are full of passion and energy; they want to build their careers in an industry that can shape the future.

This was once 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 attracted a group of eager minds who wanted to be part of this story.

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

Meanwhile, AI is providing young people with the stories they crave.

AI tells young people that they can redefine how humanity thinks, works, creates, and communicates. They can develop tools that change civilization…

Yet the crypto industry is drifting in a completely different direction. Its mission has become unclear.

The industry is gradually losing the sense of "movement," resembling more of the lobby of the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas.

Today, few can tell a story that calls a 22-year-old to adventure.

We once had such stories, but then we became a casino, a massive online casino.

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

We lost our story, which is why we became a casino, not the other way around.

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

The crypto industry once provided that feeling, but it no longer does.

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, the young, passionate, and imaginative minds.

If we want this industry to have a prosperous future, we need to make it more attractive to young people. To do this, we must provide them with a story worth crossing oceans for.

Here, I propose a brand new story:

Crypto Twitter Has Lost Its Way

Crypto Twitter has lost its sense of direction. The energy that once united us is dissipating because the common story that supported us has vanished.

In the past, this was a community connected by the shared values of "early adopters," "rebels," and "misunderstood" individuals, but now it is sliding into endless mediocrity.

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

Some have turned their accounts into "traffic farms," with content creators hiring so-called "reply armies" to create interactions, pretending no one would notice. Everyone is "gaming the system" in the most obvious ways, and worst of all, we all pretend this is normal.

The root of all this is 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 forever.

The Identity Crisis of Crypto Twitter

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

The first reason is the industry's excessive incentive mechanisms; but the deeper reason is that Crypto Twitter has lost the story it once told 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 industry.

These individuals were able to see the potential of NFTs when the world thought they were a scam. Because these people made up the majority of Crypto Twitter, a unique culture formed here—a culture of rebels, a culture of early builders, a culture that believed they were shaping the future of the internet.

But in this bull market, that rebellious industry culture has gradually disappeared.

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

When even the President of the United States starts issuing meme coins, and my uncle invests in them through ETFs, we lost our identity as "rebels" and are no longer a "different" group.

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

Every Community Needs to Redefine Itself

To survive, Crypto Twitter needs a new story; it needs to redefine itself. Just like Apple—back in the 1980s, Apple was a product for rebels, but as it gradually went mainstream, it had to reshape its image, no longer targeting just rebels, as it was no longer a niche brand.

Apple repositioned itself as "the creative guardian against conformity." Even as it became an industry giant, "Think Different" remained its new slogan.

Every community achieves redefinition 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," nor are we "rebels"; we need a new narrative.

When you think about the impact of the crypto industry, whether it’s meme coins in this bull market, Bitcoin, institutional investment, and the infiltration of mainstream culture, or NFTs, Bored Apes, and celebrity involvement in the last 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 crypto-native founders and creators go mainstream, and we have seen the most mainstream celebrities launch their projects through the crypto industry.

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

We Need a New "Enemy" to Fight

No community can survive without a common enemy. For Crypto Twitter, our past "enemies" were the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government, and those who tried to ban us and take away our work and livelihoods.

However, these "enemies" have now been defeated, even joining our ranks. We have lost our external opponents, and thus we have begun to infight, turning against each other.

We need a new "enemy" to fight. While I cannot provide a clear answer at this moment, I believe Crypto Twitter can fight to save the internet—against the "Dead Internet Theory." The internet is gradually dying; soon, comment sections will become unusable, and the public internet will be flooded with bots.

And crypto technology and NFTs are the only solutions to this problem. This is a "villain" I can imagine, and it is a goal we can all collectively fight against.

The only way out for Crypto Twitter is to write a brand new story for itself—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?

Until we find this answer, Crypto Twitter is destined to continue its path toward disintegration.

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