I believe that most public blockchains today are living in a kind of illusion.
They are financial instruments, yet they lack tangible substance.
The cash flows they bring in from outside the system are, in most cases, not clearly defined.
Will they ultimately end up serving as bait for institutionalizing an AI-driven digital economic system?
At first, people refused to accept that these were financial instruments, but eventually the public did accept that reality.
Even so, they still do not feel like financial instruments or money to me.
Yet I operate a Zebrad node and own ZEC.
In that sense, I think human decision-making is less rational than we often imagine.
I believe that the structure of technology and the structure of data are decisive clues that shape the texture of an entire society.
I think the traditional, fully centralized client-server model is approaching its limits. And I do not mean only the technical architecture itself.
When the structure of technology and data shifts radically in one direction, political systems, economic systems, lifestyles, and even human relationships are transformed as well.
I have seen this pattern throughout history.
Just as the near-hegemonic religious authority of the medieval era was dismantled by the arrival of the printing press.
Most of the coins issued on public blockchains derive their value from the expectation that these networks will be used more extensively in the future.
There are transaction fees and staking rewards, but even the people paying those fees are often just other speculative traders.
Demand â price appreciation â more participants â more fees.
There is no real connection to the external economy.
Todayâs crypto market is a world sustained by people floating within a collective imagination.
Its mechanism is fundamentally different from that of a corporation whose revenue comes from actual consumers.
Let us look at this through the same âbaitâ framework I used earlier.
In reality, this is not an unfamiliar pattern in history.
Do you remember the dot-com bubble? I was a teenager at the time.
I was simply enjoying a network connected through telephone lines without giving it much thought.
Many of you reading this probably remember that era as well.
Most investors lost money on the fiber-optic infrastructure that was built during that period.
Just like participants in todayâs blockchain industry, they correctly identified where the future was heading.
But that was not the problem.
The infrastructure funded by those ordinary people with genuine early-adopter instincts was later acquired by capital at a fraction of the cost.
And as a result, today we download games such as PUBG on Steam and enjoy them with ease.
Viewed from this perspective, what public blockchains are creating may not be a decentralized monetary revolution.
Instead, they may be building a globally accessible infrastructure for the instant settlement and transfer of digital assets.
Traders on exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Upbit may be unintentionally paying for the construction of that infrastructure.
Yet the actual economic value created by that infrastructure may ultimately be captured not by coin holders, but by entirely different actors.
For example: AI service providers and agent operators, governments, issuers operating within regulatory frameworks such as Circle and Tether, or even institutions like the UN.
From an AI perspective, the picture becomes even clearer.
If AI agents are to exchange value automatically with one another,
they will need a financial settlement layer that can operate without direct human intervention while providing instant settlement and verifiable transactions.
The most realistic candidates for that role are likely to be Tether and certain L1 settlement layers.
And when that infrastructure is eventually absorbed into the AI economy, the narrative that value will automatically flow back to decentralized coin holders may simply evaporate.
The reason is simple.
We are not the ones who operate the system or define the standards.
That role belongs to the people who write laws such as the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act.
In the end, perhaps we are all holding scams, and what we are really paying for is a rehearsal for the world that is coming.
If the players in the blockchain industry take my perspective seriously, a different strategy is required. If they are merely content with being intoxicated by âmoney printingâ and have no real interest in what kind of world will unfold, or in the grateful outsiders who are putting money into their little code games, then they can just keep enjoying the present.
However, if they recognize the problem, a structural change is necessaryâthat is, if they are truly interested in decentralization.
To give you a hint: a âhighly robust networkâ is required. If so, what are the specific alternatives to achieve this? Let those who have read this thoroughly share their thoughts.
No, I donât think legal definitions overrule the dictionary when it comes to using the word money.