Disclaimer

This post was written from my personal perspective as a crypto founder. Nothing should be construed as financial advice. This post and our products are not intended for U.S. audiences. この投稿の日本語版については、ここをクリックしてください。

TL;DR

Crypto is at a critical cultural crossroads between its casino-dominated present and its original ideals of freedom with responsibility. Despite the recent $TRUMP memecoin launch breaking all records, the pervasiveness of speculation and scams is tanking the industry’s sustainability. Our team believes the path forward requires finding balance between decentralization and order, particularly as AI increasingly influences crypto's development. We're preparing an unconventional token launch that aims to demonstrate how crypto can evolve beyond its current cultural nadir and stay true to its founding values of increasing liberty while preventing harm.

ICYMI

My last blog entry, “In Community We Trust,” is a precursor to this one. For context, we looked back on the foundational principles and success stories of crypto, and how we applied these insights towards our own evolving journey of building community and shaping culture.

State of the Union

In case you missed it, the most powerful person in the free world, President Trump, launched a memecoin days before his inauguration:

However, despite $TRUMP shattering all records for token launches, a seemingly pro-crypto administration entering office, and $BTC retracing back to its all-time high, Crypto Twitter (CT) can’t seem to stop its incestuous infighting.

In my previous blog post, I wrote about the founding ideals of the world’s first ever cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, that arose from the 2007-2008 financial crisis:

From these ashes of institutional failure, Bitcoin emerged with a radical proposition: trust in code over trust in corruptible human institutions. Its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto architected not just a new form of money, but a new foundation for trust itself—one built on cryptographic proofs rather than centralized authority.

How did we devolve so quickly from these noble first principles to abject degeneracy? Wtf happened?

Crypto Culture: Computer vs. Casino

Crypto’s cultural struggle has actually been ongoing for years between what a16z’s Chris Dixon calls “the computer vs. the casino”:

Two distinct cultures are interested in blockchains. The first sees blockchains as a way to build new networks. I call this culture the computer because, at its core, it’s about blockchains powering a new computing movement.

The other culture is mainly interested in speculation and money-making. Those of this mindset see blockchains solely as a way to create new tokens for trading. I call this culture the casino because, at its core, it’s really just about gambling.

Twelve months ago pump.fun catalyzed a new wave of no-code memecoin launchpads and now trading apps that have taken CT by storm. Ever since then crypto’s casino culture has been “winning.” (Note, I use “winning” advisedly though, as these gains reflect increased social capital—attention and mindshare—rather than positive-sum financial outcomes for participants.) Nothing encapsulates this better than the recent drama surrounding $TRUMP:

But are the memecoin-hating “midwits” just sidelined crybabies or is there any truth to their denouncements? Let’s dig deeper with some data.

A Casino of Crime

According to pump.fun, 89% of its traders have only made <$100, and the majority (60%) have lost money.

Some may argue that this is a “skill issue,” but even experienced traders have been losing their edge, and this trend will only continue to accelerate as AI-powered trading tools become more powerful and widely adopted.

Not only that, but scams and frauds are rampant in the memecoin “trenches.” In the absence of any regulation or oversight, crime has flourished, and ultimately the winning strategy for making the most money with the least risk has been to steal, rug, and cheat in this rigged game.

So why is our team still here then as builders? Despite all the scumbaggery, why have we not given up on fulfilling the original promise of blockchain?

A Cultural Crossroads

Let’s rewind the clock a bit. At the end of 2021, famed entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant wrote the following in a blog post titled “Innovation Requires Decentralization and a Frontier”:

There is a pendulum between centralization and decentralization.

For example, if you look at the crypto world, centralized finance ends up very ossified. You have the government and the regulators telling you exactly what you can and can’t do. You get regulatory capture, and next thing you know, Wall Street is sucking 20% of the profits out of the economy—and crypto can replace that.

So you get decentralization pressure where people can do it in a freeform, programmatic way. But then you end up with a lot more scams, fraud and losses as well.

An analogy might be that, in olden times, you worried about brigands and robbers in the forest, so you appealed to the king. The king builds a nice keep, the king mints the money. But next thing you know, the king is debasing the currency and the king is throwing people in jail. Then some people run off into the forest and they become brigands again because they want their freedom. But now, of course, they’re subject to attacks and harassment from their peers.

So there’s a natural pendulum swing that goes on in history between centralization and decentralization, and I think the arc of technology actually swung us towards centralization in the last decade. […]

We’re going to see this arc go back and forth.

Starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies were invented to help us break free from calcified, centralized, and walled gardens in both finance and tech industries, respectively.

However, over the past few years, the pendulum has swung too much towards decentralization, resulting in chaos, anarchy, and crime. So now that we’ve dug ourselves into this trench, are we forever stuck at the bottom here fighting daily degeneracy? The alternative would be to try and push the pendulum back towards centralization and order, but would that be antithetical to crypto’s foundational principles?

If crypto’s original ideals were “increase freedom” and “do no evil,” then the necessary environmental conditions to simultaneously satisfy both require finding a compromise between the two extremes. More decentralization leads to more freedom, but prevention of evil necessitates at least some form of control.

The path forward for us is clear, then. In order to break free from crypto’s current casino-dominant culture, we must deviate from the so-called “best practices” and playbooks that other teams have blindly or lazily followed, or else we will end up with the same fate as them.

In 2009, maximum decentralization was necessary for Bitcoin to be born and thrive amidst the existing landscape of completely centralized financial institutions. In 2025, we must pull ourselves back towards a more centralized center to reconstruct order from chaos.

How? Enter AI.

Software with a Soul

Our industry is at an important cultural crossroads right now, and in many ways the battle is over not just crypto's future but the soul of the web itself. The agentic crypto era is dawning—AI meets crypto—and the stakes couldn't be higher. While we squabble and circle jerk over "number go up," existential risks loom ever larger for our species.

AI agents—our digital offspring in a way—are rapidly developing greater capabilities through mimesis: imitation repeated ad infinitum. We are their first teachers, for better or worse.

AI has already begun infiltrating every corner of crypto, from trading to development. Like it or not, these agents are watching, learning, absorbing. They see the rugpulls, the grifts, the zero-sum games. They observe degens glorifying hedonism and nihilism, normalizing destruction and exploitation. Is this really the education we want to give our successors?

The question isn't theoretical anymore. When AI trading bots optimize for "winning," what exactly are they learning to win at? We're not just gambling with money anymore—we're gambling with the future of humanity. Our timeline deserves better stewards of technology so that future generations may benefit.

A New Culture

Our team at Amihan believes that technology, like any tool, is not inherently good or evil, but becomes so depending on the intentions of the human (or AI) that uses it. A knife can be used to innocuously chop vegetables or insidiously sever limbs. Despite all the backlash and controversy surrounding two of the most powerful technologies currently available to humans, crypto and AI, our team has not shied away from embracing and experimenting with both to push forward innovation’s frontier for the good of all mankind.

The core driving ethos behind everything we do is the belief that the collective power of humans, augmented by technology, can create a better future for everyone.

This is the culture we have adopted for our own team, and through our content and products we aim to express and impart these virtues to hopefully also be loved and adopted by you, our wonderful community, too.

With snapshot date behind us, our team is still hurriedly preparing for our upcoming TGE. However, instead of just a simple “token generation event,” we instead are cooking up a multilayered “token generation experience.” How we launch our token and what follows afterwards will be completely different from what any team has done before.

While change can be scary for some, it is necessary for innovation and evolution. Zoom out and reflect on the current state of crypto’s broken casino culture. Is this what good looks like? We need change if we want to have any hope of escaping the constant rotation of CT’s ever-shrinking recycled capital.

In the coming weeks, we hope to reveal more details on what unconventional choices we’ll be making to push our industry forward towards a new paradigm, a new culture. Like a shining beacon on a hill, our community’s cultural impact will be profound. For crypto, we will illuminate a new path forward out of the trenches. For the world at large, our shared vision will inspire millions as we prove how humanity and technology can coexist together, simultaneously both doing well and doing good.