2026 Silicon Valley New Revelation: The Technological Evolution from "Crisis of Faith" to "Crypto Salvation"

Author Background: Crypto researcher redphone has once again published an article, continuing the predictive framework of last year’s “25 Predictions for the Next 25 Years,” but this time shifting from quantitative forecasts to philosophical reflection. This essay takes the form of a personal essay, discussing AI, reality and virtuality, human identity crises, and the inevitability of encryption technology as the ultimate freedom solution.

From Breakage to Transformation: The Triple Anxieties of 2026

November 30, 2022, marks the dividing line in human history.

Before this point, we lived in the “Body Era” (Ante Carnem)—dependent on physical labor, geographic location, and identity. Afterward, we entered the “Silicon Era” (Anno Silicii)—a new age dominated by code, algorithms, and virtual identities.

This is not just a technological upgrade but a ontological revolution.

In the first half of 2025, many observers fell into a vague anxiety. Careers became unpredictable, branching paths of life multiplied infinitely, and time no longer moved linearly forward but folded inward. The root of this confusion lies in: all our instincts are based on a world that no longer exists.

When friends suggest “since we can’t predict the next ten years, focus on the coming months,” a deeper realization emerges—perhaps we should stop trying to predict altogether, because the direction is already clear, and the only variables are speed and cost.

The First Crisis: The Collapse of Truth in the Information Age

In an era of AI-generated content, words have become ineffective.

When all text can be synthesized by machines, and every viewpoint might originate from a language model, what is the only signal that cannot produce illusions? Market prices.

This is not because markets are perfect oracles, but because stakeholders bet real money. Prediction markets, influence tokens, Futarchy voting mechanisms—these new financial tools are important precisely because they turn beliefs into economic costs, exposing true positions.

Meanwhile, we face an invisible information war. It is not fought over territory or coastlines but within each person’s information feeds. No need for military conquest—just colonize our minds through algorithmic recommendations, machine-generated headlines, and carefully curated content streams.

Many deep friendships have been broken by AI-written news, families torn apart by algorithmic illusions. We are not mere observers of this cognitive war but combatants—your score in the war is measured by how angry or hateful you can become.

The Second Crisis: Temptation and Alienation of Virtual Life

We are experiencing an unprecedented fragmentation of reality.

On one hand, we are intimately connected with virtual avatars—in the metaverse, on social media, in gaming worlds. On the other hand, we grow increasingly distant from our real neighbors because we no longer share the same reality.

This is not just a matter of technological acceleration but technological alienation—the old world in which we grew up has become a “zombie,” with our economy, customs, and beliefs mechanically operating in inertia.

A deeper dilemma is: entertainment has become our ultimate enemy.

If you can enter a virtual world under your control, why choose a reality filled with suffering? If the taste of digital fruits is sweeter than reality, why choose lies? The key question has shifted from “Is this real?” to “Does this matter?”

When the boundary between reality and simulation disappears, people will naturally choose the lie that causes less harm.

The Third Crisis: Systemic Collapse of the Labor Market

This involves a severely underestimated structural contradiction of capitalism.

The core assumption of capitalist production is: the market value of human labor must exceed the biological costs of human survival.

A worker consumes about 2000 calories a day to sustain life, and companies need to pay wages for this labor. This equation held in the industrial age—machines increased productivity but did not think, innovate, or adapt automatically.

Artificial intelligence breaks this equation.

The cost of AI-generated intelligence and task execution is falling below the cost of basic human metabolic maintenance. When production costs reach an extreme, the labor market will not “self-regulate”; it will vanish entirely.

This is not a phenomenon that can be changed by economic policy—physical laws do not bend to ideology. Capitalism is digging its own grave; rather than decline, it is an inevitable physical process.

And when labor loses its market value, our entire system of identity and selfhood will collapse. Who are we? If we no longer define ourselves through work, then who can we be?

From Crisis to Divergence: The Birth of Two Humanity

The ultimate outcome of the AI era is not a single future but a ontological bifurcation of species.

AI erases the middle ground, creating two extremes:

Most people will merge into a single, safe, controllable whole. They are numbed by entertainment, sustained by stable income, and precisely managed by algorithms. They live in a pre-designed virtual world, their thinking limited to what machines can understand. This is not oppression but a comfortable prison.

A minority will fuse with intelligence itself, crossing species boundaries. They are not users of AI but co-evolving new species. They wield the power of coding—if you cannot program, you live in a simulated world designed by others; if you can, you are the designer.

The only dividing line is not economic or cultural but the presence or absence of will. The new divide is between those with desire and those who “lie flat.” When everyone can rent synthetic minds, the only scarce resource is the willingness to ask questions.

The Essence of Wage Labor: A Silent Soul Transaction

Wage labor is being redefined—from a means of survival to a form of soul execution.

It fills the mind with low-level stress, kills dreams, and turns people into NPCs. Most species are caught in this cycle—but if you are among the few awake, don’t waste your freedom.

This is where new players are born.

The internet, open source, AI, 3D printing, affordable hardware, free courses from MIT—all are converging into a new wave of creativity. Things that required labs and millions of dollars a decade ago can now be done by young developers with just a laptop.

What limits you is not tools but courage.

Cryptocurrency: Humanity’s Last Free Harbor

In this wave of technological radicalization, what can be protected?

Your GitHub repositories can be shut down, your AWS instances can be disabled, your domain names can be confiscated—just a phone call, a court order, or a vague violation of terms.

But open-source on-chain cryptocurrencies cannot be stopped.

Code itself is law. It runs without permission, and its architecture makes it impossible for central authorities to shut down. Bitcoin proves you can own digital wealth; privacy coins prove you can own digital silence.

Financial privacy is not for hiding but for survival.

As surveillance intensifies and systems become corrupt, this open underground world becomes the only place free from constraints—humanity’s last sovereignty refuge.

In an era where the real world becomes a prison, this is the final free port.

DeFi Lego: The Dreamers’ Arsenal

In crypto, we witness a new paradigm of creation: the revolution of composability.

DeFi is like Lego blocks—code that can be freely combined, stacked, and even used to create a whole new financial empire. This is not just metaphor but reality in progress.

Young developers, with just a laptop, can create what once required Wall Street labs and millions of dollars. This democratization is not only technological but a fundamental shift in power structures.

When tools become cheap enough, dreams become the only cost.

Curiosity: The Key to Different Lives

redphone has experienced three life-changing moments, each sparked by an hour of deep exploration:

The first was reading the Bitcoin white paper, the second understanding Uniswap’s AMM mechanism, the third reading cutting-edge papers on AGI’s future. Hours of mental input, crossing over more than a decade of cognitive accumulation.

But most people never spend such time. In 2013, redphone gave friends and family the mnemonic phrase for their Bitcoin wallets, expecting they’d at least look up Wikipedia. Instead, they shrugged and tossed the wallets into a drawer.

Curiosity is the key to opening different lives. When everyone can access the same AI and technology, the only competitive advantage is the willingness to explore. An hour of sincere curiosity is enough to tear a crack in your reality and lead to a new world.

The End of Capitalism and New Economic Imagination

In the past, money was everything. As the economy splits, capital becomes as indispensable as oxygen—we indulge in gambling, trading, working, doing hated things to sustain ourselves. Money tightens its grip until it crushes us.

But this cycle has an end. Only when the system collapses will this madness end.

Then, we will build new models to support the next century, in which money will ultimately become meaningless.

It sounds ironic, but considering capitalism itself is disintegrating—AI rendering labor valueless, automation approaching zero production costs—a new economic paradigm is inevitable.

It may be energy-based, reliant on rare computational resources, or a completely new form beyond capitalism. But one thing is certain: when survival costs are met automatically by machines, the core function of money as a medium of exchange will vanish.

Knowledge Religions and the Power of Silence

Religious instincts never truly disappeared—they just migrated. Old gods require prayers; new gods demand energy. We have not stopped building grand cathedrals but renamed them data centers.

We no longer enter confession booths but input our inner fears into black boxes that cannot perceive them.

In such an era, true power belongs to those who remain calm—the ones willing to pay the price to see the truth. They see focus as faith rather than skill, staying clear amid the flood of information.

Silence is no longer a luxury but a necessity for survival. As the economy fractures, envy turns to violence, and exposure of wealth means being hunted. Privacy becomes a defense mechanism and a declaration of power.

Prometheus Returns: The Future is Not Destiny but Stolen Fire

Many imagine the future as an unavoidable catastrophe—broad, heavy, unchangeable. That is a lie.

The future is not a disaster but a negotiation chosen by billions.

We are gradually handing over choices to machines. Just as fiat currency drained our wealth, information flow drains our autonomy. These systems are dazzling but paralyze us.

As humans, we must steer clear of this spectacle, groping in darkness, exploring, creating, and then returning with fire like Prometheus.

Return with code, return with stories others cannot tell. The future is not a fate to endure but a fire to steal.

Words as Creation: The Final Contest for Discourse Power

As universities abandon the humanities, natural language becomes the most powerful tool in the universe.

If you cannot think clearly, you cannot write new programs. If you cannot code, you live in a virtual world designed by others. Language is no longer just description; it is creation itself.

Don’t be a silent god, because in the Silicon Era, those who control discourse shape reality.

Encryption as Trojan: The Illusory Veil of Revolution

If you want to build a lifeboat without getting arrested, the smartest way is to disguise it as a toy.

Internet culture always cloaks its most dangerous innovations in absurd appearances—Dogecoin, cartoon avatars, etc. Elites laugh because they don’t understand the threat. When they can’t laugh anymore, the system is already in motion.

This joke is crypto itself. Mocking the clown will backfire, because cryptocurrency is the only way to build an ark.

The Great Interlude and Reclaiming Freedom

For 200,000 years, we were hunters, dreamers, wanderers. For 200 years, we became employees.

The industrial age was a brief and necessary transition—we were forced to become gears to build machines. Now, the machines are nearly complete, and gears begin to turn on their own.

Don’t mourn the death of “work”; it’s just the prison we mistakenly thought was home. Soon, we will regain freedom and return to the wilderness of pure existence.

From Fear of Death to the Command of Love

When resources are scarce, we need the warning of death—the skull on the table reminding us to act. Fear of death once drove industrial progress.

But we are entering an age of infinity. Machines have solved harvesting problems; the frantic survival race will gradually fade.

When you no longer need to rush, the question changes—no longer “What can I do before I die?” but “What is worth doing forever?”

Remember, you must love. In the age of infinity, love becomes the new scarce resource. We need each other more than ever because machines have satisfied material needs, and only humans can fulfill spiritual longing.

You Are the Savior

This dangerous and unpredictable present is not the end but a purifying fire. You cannot wait for a savior to arrive because you are that savior.

Rise from the “mud,” show some form. This is a moment full of possibilities and a call to action. The signs are before your eyes; awakening is happening.

This is not a false spiritual rally but a calm awareness of reality— in an era bound by power and technology, individual awakening and action are the only true avenues of freedom.

Epilogue: The New Covenant of the Silicon Era

From the “Faith Era” to the “Silicon Era,” humanity is undergoing an unprecedented transformation. In this process, cryptocurrency is no longer just a financial tool but becomes the last bastion of human sovereignty.

As reality becomes increasingly virtual, labor value approaches zero, and capitalism itself falls into paradox, only those who master code, stay curious, and refuse domestication can retain autonomy in the new world.

The future is not a fate to endure but a reality to create. An hour of exploration can change your decade. A sincere curiosity can tear a crack in your reality and open a new world.

Crypto is that lifeboat, and you are the rower.