“Only by walking through the vastness can one know the insignificance of humanity; only by wandering through history can one understand the brevity of life.” Director Jia Zhangke wrote this at the beginning of (Jia Xiang), with the background being Dunhuang amidst sand and wind, and the starting point being Fen Yang, Shanxi. The gaze and contemplation that extend from the land beneath our feet is precisely the perspective we must possess today to understand 'Bitcoin in county towns'—to view the center from the margins and to reinterpret technology from reality.
Jia Zhangke does not film urban illusions but rather the daily life of county towns. He records human scenes from video halls, cassette tapes to wedding companies, tricycles, and elderly choirs. In his lens, county towns are not 'left-behind places' but the true axis of Chinese society. As he said, 'County towns are the most real and substantial part of Chinese society.' If we are willing to observe Bitcoin through such a lens, we will also find that it presents a completely different face in county towns.
The mirror of technology: Two Bitcoin stories inside and outside the fifth ring.
If in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, Bitcoin is the cornerstone of Web3, the engine of decentralized finance, and the narrative fulcrum of 'digital gold,' then in many county towns, it is just another vague term—almost on par with 'pig butchering scams' and 'money laundering.'
A lawyer friend from a prefecture-level city in the northwest once told a case: a young person exchanged 'USDT' for others through WeChat groups, charging a fee of dozens of yuan for each transaction. He did not understand blockchain, KYC, or compliance; he only knew 'making money by exchanging coins.' As a result, he became a fund transfer point in an electric fraud chain and was dealt with by the police for 'aiding fraud.' He couldn't even draw a 'funding path diagram' and could only repeatedly say, 'I was just helping people exchange coins.'
Such stories emerge endlessly, reflecting a profound issue: the gap between technology and reality is not only a cognitive disconnection but also a systemic linguistic misalignment.
In the 'circle,' we discuss RWA (real assets on-chain), ZK Rollup, PayFi models, token design, and L2 ecosystems; outside the 'circle,' especially in county towns, many face the reality of frozen bank cards, frozen funds, accounts that cannot appeal, and lack of compensation after being scammed. Their first understanding of 'blockchain' often comes from anti-fraud propaganda by the police rather than reports from technology summits.
The reality of Bitcoin in county towns: it is not a technical term but a kind of accumulated social misunderstanding.
Technology does not inherently possess value; it must rely on narrative empowerment. In the narrative of county towns, Bitcoin is not 'financial freedom' or 'cross-border payment revolution,' but rather 'Have you heard that relative who speculated in coins has gone to jail?'
In county information systems, the dissemination of technology does not rely on white papers, podcasts, or AMAs, but on 'who's business it is.' This is a highly interpersonal communication mechanism. The terminology and elitist expression of Web3 struggle to penetrate this network. Therefore, it is not that county towns do not understand Bitcoin, but rather that the stories told by Bitcoin have never truly landed in county towns.
The gap in financial literacy is the fundamental soil of misunderstanding in county towns.
Many times, county users do not lack smartphones, WeChat mini-programs, or Douyin accounts; they lack the most basic financial literacy: the difference between stablecoins and points, the boundary between platform tokens and Ponzi coins, and the traceability of on-chain and off-chain funds. These pieces of information are often assumed by technology practitioners to be understood by the public, but the reality is quite the opposite.
In this context, the disguise of fraudsters is even more 'close to life' than the explanations of technical personnel—they know how to persuade people using the language of county towns; while technical personnel often get caught up in self-satisfied jargon and cannot translate 'the TPS efficiency improvement of Layer 2' into a simple 'your transfer will be faster and cheaper.'
This communication failure is the root of misunderstanding.
The solution is not to promote technology but to 'reinvent the narrative.'
For technology to truly enter life, it must be clear, usable, and trustworthy. Currently, these three conditions are still fragmented in many county areas:
Unclear: Promotional materials are highly abstract and lack expressions close to the actual scenes in county towns;
Not usable: There is no actual demand for cross-border payments, and no compliant stablecoin integration scenarios;
Untrustworthy: The public, having been exposed to 'cryptocurrency scams,' is naturally skeptical of new things.
If Web3 really wants to 'land in China,' then its narrative also needs to be localized. It is not about making county towns adapt to the language of Web3, but rather Web3 should actively 'sink down' and learn to speak the language of county towns.
This is precisely the entry point that AI platforms like Mlion.ai can intervene in—through intelligent analysis of on-chain data, it not only serves professional investors but can also construct a more intuitive financial map for non-professional users. In the future, by localizing and semanticizing 'on-chain behavior' and 'risk monitoring' modules, the platform may provide risk warnings and popular science information to grassroots users and ordinary users, turning 'on-chain knowledge' into 'offline cognition.'
Conclusion: Only by allowing technology to traverse misunderstandings can it truly reach the future.
Bitcoin is not destined to be misunderstood; it is simply untranslated in the realistic context of county towns. When an industry continuously tells its future to the world, we also need to look back: where is that 'last person to be told,' how does he understand our technology, and will he miss the entire technological cycle because of being scammed once?
County towns are not backward areas; they exist in another order that is closer to reality. If we cannot explain the value of Bitcoin in county towns, it will be difficult to have true universal vitality.
The future of technology is not in white papers or solely in industry conferences, but in those moments beside tricycles, next to bulletin boards, when the elderly ask, 'Is this a scam?' When technology finally learns to speak in their language, it has truly reached the center of life.
Disclaimer: The above content is for informational sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice!