More brutal than a bear market, OpenClaw founder advises young people to stay away from Crypto

On February 27, when a user asked OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger on the X platform for “the best advice for 20-year-olds,” Peter Steinberger straightforwardly said, “Don’t waste time on cryptocurrency.” As the founder of the hottest AI product right now, Steinberger has not hidden his disdain for cryptocurrencies. He has warned crypto practitioners not to harass him, and even users mentioning Bitcoin in OpenClaw’s Discord have been banned.

This blunt remark sparked a wave of memes and self-deprecating jokes in the crypto community. But unlike the market downturn and crypto practitioners shouting “crypto is dead,” when “don’t waste time on cryptocurrency” is given as advice to young people by a top AI entrepreneur, it still stings the crypto industry.

It puts our anxiety front and center — crypto is no longer the best solution for young people today.

Recalling 2011, OG in crypto and BitBit founder Chang Jiao’s advice for college students to invest all 6,000 yuan in Bitcoin was seen as one of the strongest examples of the crypto industry’s long-termism and suitability for young people. But Chang Jiao himself has not always stuck with crypto; by 2023, BitBit had stopped publishing crypto-related news and shifted to content on AI, metaverse, and other fields. After turning to AI entrepreneurship in 2024, he completely disappeared from the crypto scene.

Chang Jiao, an early mover, once attracted criticism, but now the crypto scene has been undeniably siphoned by AI. Talent is migrating, capital is reallocating, and attention is shifting.

Talent Migration: OGs Becoming AI Bloggers

Another OG in crypto, Cobo co-founder and CEO Shen Yu, is also one of the early Bitcoin mining figures. As a survivor through multiple cycles, Shen Yu often shares his understanding of market phases and investment insights on social media, making him popular in the crypto community.

Recently, Shen Yu has transformed from a crypto OG into an AI blogger. Over the past month, more than 80% of his social media content has been about OpenClaw, with little to no crypto-related posts. Shen Yu even joked about successfully switching careers.

His exploration and focus on AI remain at the personal level; his company’s business and his personal career still revolve around crypto. So, we can interpret Shen Yu’s obsession with AI as a good habit of actively improving oneself and keeping up with the times during “market downtime.” But the talent migration from crypto to AI is real.

A senior executive at zkSync, Anthony Rose, announced on February 4 that after four years at Matter Labs, he would leave and likely shift to AI; Nader Dabit, director of developer advocacy at EigenLayer, also announced on February 5 that he was leaving EigenLayer to become growth director at an AI company, saying he “joined the future.”

The most recent high-profile exit is Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, who announced he is leaving crypto to focus on AI and robotics. Known for early bets on Solana, his departure has shaken confidence in crypto. Even more surprisingly, on the day he left, Kyle Samani disparaged the crypto industry, saying, “Cryptocurrency is not nearly as interesting as many (including myself) once thought.”

Recommended reading: “Kyle Samani’s Exit from Crypto, Is There More to the Story?”

Capital Migration: Native Crypto VCs Starting to Allocate to AI

Native crypto VCs are also reluctant to waste more time in the crypto industry.

On February 28, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paradigm, a crypto-focused venture capital firm, is planning to raise a new fund focused on AI and robotics, with a maximum size of about $1.5 billion. Paradigm is one of the most pure crypto-native capital firms. It gained fame in 2019 for investing in and incubating Uniswap, and its early investments in other crypto projects (like Lido, Optimism, dYdX, Blur) have also been successful, making it a research-driven VC alongside a16z crypto.

Because of this, Paradigm’s shift is highly symbolic.

If crypto were still in a period of rapid innovation, continuously generating projects capable of attracting billion-dollar investments, Paradigm wouldn’t need to set up a dedicated fund for AI. But the reality is that infrastructure narratives in crypto (L1, L2, DEX, etc.) are highly saturated, and the number of high-quality early projects capable of a “paradigm shift” is dwindling.

Overall, there are no good projects left in crypto VC. Data shows that over the past four years, the number of crypto VC deals has declined annually. In 2022, there were 1,639 deals in the primary crypto market; by 2025, that number dropped to 829, with early-stage funding dropping from 50% to below 35%.

Source: What Can the Crypto Market Trade After a Year?

When there are no more investments in crypto, AI, as a booming industry, naturally becomes the best target for crypto capital. From foundational large models to AI agents, from computing chips to robotics, AI can support large-scale capital deployment and continuously generate growth stories — making it the biggest reservoir of capital worldwide today.

For a VC managing over $12.7 billion in assets, the core question is never “Is our faith wavering?” but rather “Does the return function still hold?” When the number of viable projects in crypto declines, betting solely on crypto increases portfolio risk and reduces return elasticity. Under these circumstances, continuing to insist on “crypto-native” makes less and less sense.

Thus, Paradigm’s proactive expansion into AI is driven by the times — this is not just a strategic choice for individual firms, but a signal of the industry’s stage.

Attention Shift: Crypto Players Obsessing Over AI

In terms of market attention, Crypto is one of the most opportunistic industries. Whether political hot topics, cutting-edge technology, or social headlines, whenever there’s buzz, related projects or memes tend to pop up in crypto circles. Historically, whenever AI technology or product breakthroughs occur, the crypto scene would generate “Crypto+AI” projects or meme coins to attract attention.

After OpenClaw became popular, the crypto community quickly jumped on the bandwagon — creating meme coins with the same name, trading tokens for OpenClaw, betting on prediction markets, etc. But later, the focus shifted from “how to crypto-ify OpenClaw” to “how to actually use OpenClaw.”

Many crypto researchers have started sharing tutorials on installing and using OpenClaw, openly discussing their AI workflows, even detailing how to train personal AI agents to help with coding, research, and content creation. Some crypto KOLs have even started charging small fees for beginners to install OpenClaw.

Offline crypto AI events are also packed with attendees. The most popular recent event was the “Web4 China Tour” organized by OG in crypto, Kong Jianping, from February 25 to March 8, held in five Chinese cities, mainly focusing on OpenClaw and AI agents, with almost no crypto-related topics.

This is no longer just riding the trend — it’s a genuine attention shift. Self-proclaimed progressive crypto players are now worried about falling behind in the AI era.

Crypto AI Offline Event Scene

Why are crypto practitioners so obsessed with AI?

Crypto is inherently a “super-individual” industry, with many independent developers, traders, and content creators. These individuals naturally seek tools that improve efficiency to compensate for human limitations. When AI can significantly amplify personal productivity, crypto players are among the first to embrace it.

Furthermore, crypto culture itself has a strong geek spirit and technological worship. Although “technological narratives” have been somewhat downplayed in recent years, most crypto enthusiasts still believe that “underlying technology can change the world.” Today, AI exudes more of a technological revolution vibe than blockchain, naturally attracting crypto fans.

Of course, a more pragmatic reason is that during the crypto market lull, AI keeps creating “new things,” while crypto continues to reorganize old narratives. Without native crypto innovation or significant wealth effects, the entire scene relies on market prediction and RWA (real-world assets) for external stimuli. In this context, the new topics and cognitive stimulation brought by AI fill the spiritual void left by the slowing market.

It’s time to talk about something beyond crypto and AI

Finally, returning to the opening statement by OpenClaw’s founder, the reason it resonated in the crypto community isn’t because it was dismissive, but because it revealed a truth many crypto people are quietly acting on — the smartest are reallocating their time.

We are now in an era where wealth generation slows down, but technological productivity explodes.

On one hand, as crypto cycles slow, alpha shrinks, and wealth growth flattens, the marginal returns of the past year’s “information chasing, hot topic chasing, profit chasing” approach are diminishing; on the other hand, AI is compressing the time needed to solve problems. Tasks like coding, content creation, which once took significant effort, can now be done in minutes by models, vastly surpassing human efficiency.

When the “quantity of pursuit results” is highly condensed by AI, we may find ourselves with more free time to do things that aren’t driven by efficiency or profit — seeking “carbon-based meaning,” experiencing the world, building independent cognitive systems beyond market fluctuations, and establishing our own value coordinates.

In the future of AI, what might truly differentiate people is perhaps their aesthetic judgment, independent thinking, and personal meaning-making.