Chapter One: Silicon Valley: The Digital Utopia of Tech Evangelists
In a garage twenty kilometers south of Stanford University, a serial entrepreneur with a goatee is drawing an amazing curve on a whiteboard: "Our DAO will reconstruct the way humans organize!" Outside the glass door, a Mexican delivery guy silently places sushi next to the valuation sign - the "$300M" written on it with a whiteboard marker is not yet dry.
This scene perfectly interprets the survival rules of the Silicon Valley blockchain circle: using the simplest physical space to carry the most inflated virtual dreams. Data from a certain incubator shows that among the blockchain projects born in the Bay Area in 2023, 37 want to build the "next-generation internet underlying protocol," 29 claim to "disrupt traditional finance," and 15 are preparing to save endangered species with NFTs - including a project that issues digital collectibles for polar bears, even though the team has never seen a real bear.
Venture capitalists' investment logic is comparable to metaphysics. A partner at Sequoia Capital said to me while playing (Genshin Impact): "Looking at projects is like drawing cards, betting on nothing more than the next Axie Infinity." They just invested in a metaverse real estate project, whose founder used to sell sex toys, and the reason for the transformation is quite philosophical: "The virtual world needs hormonal economics even more."
Blockchain projects here are like cacti under the California sun, able to grow wildly without watering. Someone developed a "blockchain organic egg traceability system," but consumers discovered that the chicken was still the same chicken, only the egg-laying record was on the chain. The latest funded Web3 social platform focuses on "returning data sovereignty to users," although its daily active users are not as high as the membership system of a street corner milk tea shop.
Venture capitalists' explanation for this is full of philosophical meaning: "If you don't understand it, that's right. In 1999, people also said that Amazon was selling books."
The most magical thing is the practice of technical geeks. I audited a "Blockchain and Feminism" seminar at Berkeley, and a former Google engineer suddenly raised his hand: "We should develop menstrual cycle NFTs!" Later, someone actually did it and raised $8 million. Now this project called MoonCycle has a market value higher than the annual sanitary napkin import of most developing countries.
Chapter Two: Seoul: K-Charts are More Addictive Than K-Pop
A new rhythm has been mixed into the music in the nightclubs of Gangnam: "BTC! ETH! ICP!" The VIP rooms of plastic surgery hospitals suddenly collectively lost internet connection - not a hacker attack, but because the nurses all went to buy the dip. This nationwide cryptocurrency frenzy has made South Korea the country with the highest per capita cryptocurrency trading volume in the world, and even a seventy-one-year-old grandma can discuss the difference between "death cross" and "golden cross" with you.
The day a certain idol group announced the release of fan tokens, it caused the aunties to suddenly understand what a smart contract is: "Isn't this just an electronic version of a small card!"
A computer science professor at Hongik University lamented in class: "I've been teaching cryptography for twenty years, and it's not as good as BTS's agent releasing a white paper." The most popular music program started using blockchain voting, and fans quickly discovered that the cost of brushing votes changed from milk tea money to real money Gas fees.
The government's attitude is more fickle than the weather in Gangnam. In the morning, they posted a "Blockchain Revitalization Plan" poster, and in the afternoon, they shut down three exchanges. Some lawmakers have proposed transforming Seoul into a "Crypto Special City," with plans even including paying civil servants' salaries with Bitcoin - until someone calculated that the transaction might require paying an equivalent amount in miner fees.
The most black humorous thing is the stock price of a kimchi factory, which rose for ten consecutive days because it was renamed "Blockchain Kimchi Technology." Although their official website spelled wallet as "walet", a reporter's investigation found that the company's actual blockchain business was just printing a QR code on the packaging - scanning the code displayed "authentic ancestral recipe," and the data was stored in a local Excel file.
Chapter Three: Switzerland: Precision Watchmakers Playing with Crypto Art
The private bank vaults of Geneva are undergoing a digital Renaissance: next to the ancestral safe deposit boxes are a few hardware wallets that look like coffee machines. A report from an ancient family office shows that the crypto assets they manage have exceeded Switzerland's annual export of Swiss Army knives.
In the "Crypto Valley" of Zug, lawyers in suits are drafting constitutions for DAO organizations, with clauses detailing how to vote "if a founding member is kidnapped by aliens" and "if a founding member is buried by an Alpine avalanche." The regulation here is as flexible as Swiss cheese - full of holes, but each hole is precisely measured. One project raised 200 million Swiss francs through "crypto bonds," with the collateral being the founder's collection of Rolexes. The smart contract stipulates that if the repayment is overdue, the watch will automatically be transferred to the creditor's digital wallet.
Local restaurants accept fifteen types of tokens for payment, including exchanging a meme coin for cheese fondue - although the gas fee is more expensive than the fondue at the time of settlement.
The art world's operations are even more sophisticated. At Art Basel, a gallery launched "Divisible Picasso," splitting the ownership of a drawing into 1 million NFTs. Purchasers cannot take the painting home or prevent others from copying the image, but they can gain the psychological satisfaction of "co-owning a Picasso" - this is probably the latest realm of capitalism: even vanity can be securitized.
Chapter Four: Nigeria: The Digital Upgrade of 419 Fraud
"Dear friend, I am the son of the former president of Nigeria..." This type of classic email scam is undergoing genetic mutations. The latest version has become: "The ETH in your wallet has been selected to participate in the central bank's digital currency airdrop." In internet cafes in Lagos, young people are not discussing how to prevent fraud, but how to write scams into smart contracts.
One-third of the youth in this most populous African country have participated in cryptocurrency transactions, not because they understand finance better than Wall Street, but simply because the local currency, Naira, is depreciating faster than the phone battery is draining. Vendors selling cassava in the market are hanging signs saying "Accept USDT," although settlement often takes two hours longer due to network congestion - just enough time to finish three bowls of cassava porridge.
The government's attitude is very divided: the central bank explicitly prohibits cryptocurrency transactions, while secretly developing its own digital currency. A lawmaker said excitedly in a televised debate: "Blockchain is a new tool of colonialism!" Later, it was revealed that he had $800,000 worth of Bitcoin in his wallet. The most popular trading platform is called "419Exchange," named after a clause in Nigerian criminal law on fraud - this kind of self-deprecating spirit is very blockchain.
Chapter Five: Singapore: The Crypto Arbitrage Game on a Tropical Island
In the infinity pool on the top floor of the Sands Hotel, hedge fund managers discuss "impermanent loss" while soaking in the water. This city-state's blockchain strategy is like its weather: seemingly constant at 26 degrees on the surface, but with undercurrents surging beneath. The Monetary Authority of Singapore had just issued digital banking licenses and then banned cryptocurrency retail advertising, its policies swinging like the cable car in Sentosa.
The real exciting drama is happening among family offices. A Fujian tycoon used 300 BTC to set up a fund in Singapore, with the investment direction being "Southeast Asian blockchain infrastructure," which is actually mainly used to buy luxury homes on Orchard Road. Local lawyers invented the "Revocable Web3 Trust" to perfectly meet the client's needs for both compliance and running away.
Research projects in universities are full of Southeast Asian characteristics. A team at the National University of Singapore developed a "Durian Futures Blockchain," claiming to use IoT devices to monitor durian maturity and automatically settle payments. During the trial phase, a bug occurred, causing a Musang King durian in a certain orchard to be forcibly auctioned by the smart contract before it was ripe - this is probably the most expensive code error, worth the equivalent of half a Bitcoin.
Chapter Six: El Salvador: The Magical Realism of Bitcoin Beach
The day President Bukele announced that Bitcoin would become legal tender, ATMs across the country showed signs of indigestion. This Central American country's experiment is like installing a rocket engine on a bicycle - it will either soar into the sky or end up in pieces on the ground.
The reality is the latter. The Chivo wallet strongly promoted by the government frequently crashed. A farmer received a $30 Bitcoin subsidy, but because he didn't know how to operate it, it eventually became a $2 miner fee. The volcanic geothermal mining plan sounded very environmentally friendly, until people discovered that the power generation was not even enough to dry coffee beans. The most ironic thing is that when the price of Bitcoin plummeted, the president's "buy the dip" advice on Twitter was automatically folded and marked as "high-risk content."
If you go to "Bitcoin Beach" in La Libertad now, you can still see faded promotional posters with the slogan "Financial Inclusivity" printed on them, next to a dozen coconut stalls that cannot scan QR codes. A fisherman told me that the Bitcoin in his wallet is just enough to buy a beer, "but I have to wait for the price to go back up, now it's only enough to buy the bottle cap."
Chapter Seven: China: Parallel Universes Inside and Outside the Great Firewall
The blockchain developer conference in Beijing has a strange sense of division: experts on the stage talk about "alliance chains empowering the real economy," while the audience secretly uses VPN to check coin prices. China is the global leader in the number of blockchain patents, but most of these patents are related to scenarios such as "the application of distributed ledgers in housing provident fund management."
The most Chinese characteristic is the promotion of the digital RMB. The way aunties lined up to receive red envelopes in a mall in Shenzhen was exactly the same as the rush to buy stock subscription certificates thirty years ago. There is a good joke that says: Chinese people don't dislike cryptocurrencies, they just prefer "organized and disciplined blockchain."
People's wisdom is always beyond imagination. A businessman in Yiwu, Zhejiang, invented "blockchain mahjong," where the record of winning hands is on the chain and cannot be tampered with, which is especially suitable for resolving historical disputes such as "You definitely stole my tile just now." A coal mine in Shanxi uses blockchain to trace the transportation of coal, only to find that the data that needs to be tamper-proof the most is not the data itself, but the toll invoices.
Final Chapter: Technology, Bubbles, and Human Comedy
When I was at a blockchain conference in Hainan, scrounging for a buffet, I heard a conversation between two bald大佬:
"Your air coin..."
"Shhh, now it's called the Metaverse Ecological Token."
Next door, the real technical team is demonstrating an agricultural product traceability chain, and there are few visitors in front of the booth.
This industry is like modern alchemy: some people want to turn stone into gold, some people want to change the world, and more people are just jumping大神in the smoke. Crypto billionaires in Dubai buy yachts with NFTs, African farmers buy seeds with stablecoins, and Silicon Valley geeks vote in DAOs to decide whether to eat pizza or sushi for lunch - these stories from parallel universes are all written into the same decentralized ledger.
Perhaps the most authentic application of blockchain is to permanently engrave human greed, naivety, and creativity with a hash algorithm. As for whether it will eventually become the steam engine of the information age or another tulip mania? The answer to this question may be more difficult to reach a consensus than a 51% attack.
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