Author: Liu Honglin
Some criticisms of Comrade Meng Yan.
Today, Comrade Meng Yan published a lengthy article, lamenting that the US has passed the GENIUS Act, calling it the Bretton Woods Conference in modern monetary history, the Nixon Shock, and asserting that the 'supranational network' of dollar stablecoins has incorporated the world into its system, with other countries facing the beginning of a currency sovereignty defense war.
The article is beautifully written, grand in momentum, and broad in perspective; while reading it, I felt a bit dazed, as if I were seeing a prophetic thinker who has transcended two centuries, worrying about the future of the entire human financial system.
But after calming down, I can't help but ask: who is this article written for?
If this is written for the Chinese government, then you might really underestimate the national strategic investment in blockchain over the past few years. Since 2019, when it was proposed that 'blockchain is an important breakthrough for independent innovation in core technology', the central bank has been promoting the implementation of DC/EP while clearly stating the importance of blockchain at the institutional level; there are countless distributed ledger platforms with state-owned backgrounds, and alliance chains and industrial chain projects are flourishing.
Indeed, not every project is reliable, but the accusation of 'ignoring blockchain and watching it fall behind' is probably not true.
If this is written for the industry, especially for Chinese internet entrepreneurs, that's even less justifiable. Chinese internet companies have not stopped exploring the Web3 direction in recent years: doing NFTs, building public chains, creating wallets, working on the metaverse... They have tried many things and suffered significant losses. But at least they haven't been absent. The reality is: under the dual pressure of compliance restrictions and unclear overseas policies, the path from experimentation to implementation and from products to applications is very limited. We can criticize execution, we can criticize the lack of direction, but you can't say they haven't been working.
If anyone should apologize to blockchain, it would be those fraudulent schemes that disguise themselves under the banner of blockchain.
Ultimately, the person most moved by this article may be the author himself. He laments that 'blockchain needs to be understood again', painfully states that 'we have missed opportunities', and even hopes to 'say sorry to blockchain' — it sounds sincere and emotional.
But the question is: if the deep love expressed for this land in the article is sincere, shouldn't one get involved, work hard, and build positively?
It's far too easy to sit across the ocean and discuss.
I do not oppose criticism, nor do I oppose creating pressure at the level of public opinion, and I don't even oppose occasionally expressing sentiment. But the development of the industry has never relied on one or two emotionally charged articles; it has been built slowly by those who quietly work hard and lay down infrastructure.
'Talk less about ideology, solve more problems' is what the industry needs most right now.
The real question has never been 'do we realize this technological revolution', but rather 'can we carry out this revolution steadily, implement it, and ensure it is reliable within the existing institutional environment'.
This is the difficulty.
Many phenomena mentioned in the article, such as the Australian central bank slowing its pace after pilot testing, Singapore's policy swings, and Wall Street banks' internal simulations without rushing to implementation, do they not indicate that this is not a 'China-specific delay syndrome', but a global issue of complex games between technology and regulation, innovation and order?
Laying out all this background and then attributing everything to 'playing dead' or 'a collective misjudgment of technology' is a bit hasty.
In our industry, too many people are packaging their views with 'sentiment'. Today they talk about monetary revolution, tomorrow about sovereignty challenges, and the day after that about the transformation of civilizational forms. But if you really ask: are you making products? Or are you working on compliance? Or are you focused on the underlying technology? Many people have done nothing; at most, they've hosted a few friends in the Bay Area who work on blockchain, attended a few overseas launch events, and then returned to write an article about 'the strategic lack of global governance'.
This article is not without value; it makes more people aware of the international geopolitical significance of US dollar stablecoins, which is a good thing. But if, as stated in the article, one has a heart for the country and the people, I would prefer to do something practical, even if it's just a small step, like many entrepreneurs quietly establishing compliant exchanges and stablecoins in Hong Kong, or the technical teams working on on-chain payment infrastructure.
Because what this industry lacks the most is not articles, but applications; not shouts, but systems; not emotions, but construction.
Apologizing to blockchain? It’s better to say thank you to those developers who are still working and those who are willing to build positively.
We can no longer waste time on self-indulgent sentimentality.