Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher
Peter Steinberger, founder of the open-source project OpenClaw, responded yesterday on X to a user’s question, “What advice do you have for people in their 20s?” His reply was just one sentence: “don't waste time with crypto.” This tweet was subsequently retweeted by Lily Liu, Chair of the Solana Foundation, who also posted an identical one-sentence response.
The two tweets combined received over a million views, and the comment section quickly filled with skepticism: Is Lily Liu responding with irony, or does this signify the decline of the crypto industry?
Steinberger has reason to dislike the industry—what about Lily?
OpenClaw, which previously underwent two name changes as Clawdbot and Moltbot, was officially launched under the name OpenClaw on January 30 of this year. The project has since garnered over two hundred thousand stars on GitHub, becoming a rare phenomenon in the open-source community recently.
After the project went viral, it was followed by a flood of noise unrelated to technical development, with speculators flooding the community to pressure for token issuance and attempting to exploit the project's popularity for hype. As a result, Steinberger developed a strong aversion to the crypto industry, even implementing a complete ban on Discord: any mention of “crypto” or “bitcoin”—whether for promotion, spam, or even purely technical discussion—was immediately met with a ban.
According to CoinDesk, the ban stemmed from an incident in January, when the project, originally named Clawdbot, decided to rename itself following a trademark warning from Anthropic. During the brief window of just a few seconds between relinquishing the old GitHub/X accounts and registering new ones, someone immediately hijacked the accounts and launched a fake $CLAWD token on Solana.
A counterfeit token surged to $16 million in market cap within hours; after Steinberger publicly denied involvement, its price crashed over 90%, leaving late entrants with total losses. He was subsequently harassed relentlessly by victims, prompting him to issue a public statement: “Please stop harassing me—the crypto community—I will never launch a token, and anyone claiming I am a token holder is a scammer!”
In this context, his statement not to waste time on cryptocurrencies is a direct response to persistent harassment, clearly targeted and not a comprehensive rejection of cryptocurrencies as a technology or asset class.
Lily’s situation was entirely different: amid heightened market attention to Steinberger’s original post, she chose not only to repost but also to personally repeat the same statement. Outside interpretations largely fell into two categories: one viewed it as a pessimistic signal about the state of the industry; the other believed the statement was ironic, targeting specific behavioral patterns within the crypto industry rather than the industry as a whole.
But regardless of Lily’s intentions, her statement triggered largely negative reactions in the market. Several industry figures publicly criticized it, arguing that it was clearly inconsistent with her role and responsibilities,“Aschair of the foundation, you’re essentially telling holders that what they’ve bet on isn’t worth it—whether or not it was meant as a joke, the signal itself is extremely damaging”.
However, it must be acknowledged that in the current industry narrative, projects focused on rapid token launches, creating short-term wealth effects, and lacking substantive technological development have long been a central point of discussion. This long-term erosion of the ecosystem has accelerated the exodus of capital and talent, with AI being the primary beneficiary of these resources.
Funds and talent are leaving en masse—where is the crypto industry headed?
Renowned investor Stanley Druckenmiller mentioned in an interview with Morgan Stanley that the younger generation's interest is shifting from cryptocurrency to artificial intelligence.
This aligns with the current trend in the crypto industry, where a large number of technical talents and early-stage venture capital are converging on AI, causing the narrative momentum in the crypto market to plummet to a low point.
Carefully consider that the current AI industry is still in the early stage of infrastructure development and technological capacity expansion, characterized primarily by value creation. The technological dividend has not yet been fully realized, the entrepreneurial window remains open, and the return expectations for early participants are relatively clear. The flow of young talent toward this direction is a rational response to genuine opportunities, not an active rejection of cryptocurrency.
Historically, the development of mobile internet also went through similar stages of evolution. In the later phase of the value creation cycle, as technological advantages plateau and intensifying market competition compresses startup returns, capital and attention begin seeking new outlets. The concentrated surge in the cryptocurrency market in 2017 closely coincided with the maturation of mobile internet, underscoring that the onset of a value reallocation cycle often accompanies the absorption of excess capital by new asset classes.
It remains uncertain whether the current development cycle of AI will follow a similar path. However, if we use this as a reference, the true cycle of value reallocation will only begin when homogenous competition in the AI market starts driving down overall entrepreneurial returns and market attention begins to shift away from AI. At that stage, the crypto market—with its lower asset barriers and higher liquidity—will still appeal to younger generations with limited capital accumulation, and will not be permanently overlooked due to today’s short-term shifts in attention.
For the cryptocurrency industry, the maturation of any emerging sector inevitably passes through this phase: the loss of attention, valuation corrections, and the elimination of speculative projects are all components of the industry cycle, not its end.
Rises and falls are normal; what truly matters is what remains after the downturn.