I just read something that’s been lingering in my mind. The founder of OpenAI was straightforward when asked what advice he would give to 20-year-olds: "Don’t waste time on cryptocurrencies." Period. No beating around the bush.

What’s interesting isn’t the disdain—it's already known that many tech leaders hold that stance. What caught my attention is that this seems to validate something the crypto community has been doing silently: reallocating their time and attention elsewhere.

Look, in 2011, a legendary crypto pioneer told college students to put everything into Bitcoin. That was the advice of the time. But that same guy? Recently pivoted completely to AI and the metaverse, and now he’s practically disappeared from the crypto ecosystem. It’s no coincidence.

Crypto OGs are migrating. Shen Yu, co-founder of Cobo and survivor of multiple cycles, went from being a constant voice on crypto markets to posting almost exclusively about AI in the last month. Over 80% of his content now is about AI tools. He joked about his "successful transformation." Anthony Rose left zkSync after four years. Nader Dabit left EigenLayer. Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, directly announced his exit from crypto to focus on AI and robotics, saying that "cryptocurrencies are not as interesting as we once imagined."

This isn’t just people chasing the next hype. It’s capital and talent repositioning.

Capital is moving too. Paradigm, one of the most crypto-native VC firms—early backers of Uniswap, Lido, Optimism—is raising a $1.5 billion fund dedicated solely to AI and robotics. Paradigm. The VC that seemed unbeatable in crypto. Why? Because the brutal reality is: investment rounds in crypto dropped from 1,639 in 2022 to 829 in 2025. Crypto infrastructure is saturated. There aren’t enough truly high-quality projects to absorb that scale of capital. When there’s nowhere to invest in crypto, AI—constantly generating new layers of innovation—becomes the best destination.

But the most revealing thing is how community attention has shifted. When OpenAI went viral, yes, crypto tried to monetize it with memes and tokens. But then something different happened. Crypto researchers started publishing serious tutorials on how to use these tools. Crypto KOLs began offering installation and setup services. There are in-person events fully dedicated to AI organized by crypto veterans, focused on AI agents and almost unrelated to blockchain.

This is no longer about riding a trend. It’s a true migration of attention. Those who consider themselves progressive in crypto are afraid of falling behind in the AI era.

Why? Crypto has always had a high concentration of "superindividuals"—developers, traders, creators—seeking to amplify their productivity. When a tool can multiply your personal efficiency, crypto folks will be the first to adopt it. Plus, the tech and geek spirit still lives on in crypto, but now AI has a more revolutionary aura than blockchain.

But there’s something deeper. The crypto market is stagnating. The narrative is recycled. Without real native innovation and significant wealth effects, the ecosystem sustains itself mainly with predictive markets and RWA. Meanwhile, AI constantly generates "new things." For someone burned out by crypto cycles with no movement, that’s stimulating.

So when the OpenAI founder says young people shouldn’t waste time on crypto, it’s not just his opinion. It’s a reflection of what the smartest in the crypto ecosystem are already doing with their time: repositioning.

We’re at a moment where the rate of wealth creation is low but technological productivity is exploding. The game of "searching for information, chasing trends, seeking gains" yields diminishing returns. Meanwhile, AI condenses the time needed to solve problems. What used to take hours now takes minutes.

Maybe the real question isn’t crypto vs. AI. It’s what we do with the time that technology gives us back. Because when the pursuit of results is compressed so much, perhaps there’s space for things that don’t seek efficiency: building real meaning, developing independent judgment, authentic experiences. That might be what truly sets people apart in the future.