Red, White, Black & Blue—Mutilation of our society at the hands of our leaders. Art by Ruben Ubiera—aka @urbanruben—painted in the Wynwood area of Miami, Florida.
Welcome to a new era of innovation and prosperity
A recent Gallup poll shows that our trust in institutions is at a historic low of 28%😳. The list of such powers is long and includes the CCP, Wall Street, Big Tech, the 'top schools", Hollywood, corporate media, Central Banks, all governments, and public agencies. The bottom line is that these institutions are structurally obsolete and crumbling, and will never regain the faith of the people they poorly serve.
“The decentralized future is not just about creating new applications; it’s about rethinking how we organize society. You shouldn’t have to trust any single person, institution, or centralized organization to transact and get things done.”
—Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder and developer of Ethereum
But fear not! A growing global citizen movement is emerging to reclaim our privacy, freedom, and dignity from centralized powers. Back in 2008, whoever the person or group whose pseudonym is Satoshi Nakamoto set out to create a decentralized, trustless, and censorship-resistant currency. With Bitcoin now trading $110,000+, it's fair to suggest Nakamoto's core thesis and architecture model have been validated. Once again, almost out of nowhere, the early founders of Bitcoin created a technology metaphor to radically diminish centralized power, inspiring a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.
Nvidia's cumulative 10-year return of 34,815% is second only to Bitcoin, and was recently boosted with a little help from CEO Jensen Huang's new friend, who let him slide on selling AI chips to the Chinese Communist Party.😳 Art by Grok.
Bitcoin has been the best-performing investment over both the last 10 years (2015–2025) and since its inception (2010–2025), with cumulative returns of ~40,458% and 117,793,500%, respectively. No other asset class, including equities, gold, bonds, or commodities, comes close, although specific stocks, such as NVIDIA (~34,815% over 10 years), are notable outliers.
As the innate entrepreneurial nature of Silicon would have it, clever blockchain and AI entrepreneurs feel our suffering under centralized power and understand that where agony exists, so does huge opportunity. An immutable Silicon Valley entrepreneurial principle is—Consumers will eventually get what they want—so let's help 'em go get it!
Cryptonite architects and edits all its productions for the global audience, who will create over $200 trillion in new wealth and millions of new jobs during the Web3 transformation over the next 20 years.
Today, there are over 5,000 Web3 entrepreneurs, backed by half a trillion dollars in VC funding, busy building decentralized and AI-powered apps across all industries, basically rewriting how we do things all over again for the better. The take down of the Bureaucratic State will create over $200 trillion in new wealth and millions of new jobs over the next 20 years.
This boom will not be without the most significant reshuffling of the labor market in history, which means challenging times for many, particularly members of the middle-manager class who do not retool for the new world of dApps and AI bots. Robots and autonomous vehicles are also replacing many functions. Do you want to be driven in the privacy of a Waymo or picked up by some semi-random dude in their random car?
Job losses over the last 3 years, with AI and Robots taking more!
Does anybody want to lease a dated 1970s office building?
We wondered out loud with Elon Musk last year whether the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was the turkey in the coal mine. Suppose you add the number of people who quit going into the office, or do a lot less today, with the accelerating AI/robotics-driven downsizing of Corporate America. What happens to office space vacancy rates, and the bank loans supporting them? Pre-pandemic vacancy rates were 12-13%, today they are 19-20%, and McKinsey estimates 800,000 US office-based roles are at risk by 2027.😳 We see this as a major card that still needs to fall, and if anything could create a recession, it would be the further collapse of small banks.
We remain optimistic that the Web3 wave of innovation, currently in full motion and development, will lead to a better, more private, and less distracted world. These innovations will also continue to accelerate the decline in poverty rates and raise the global standard of living. Simply onboarding the 20% of adults worldwide who are currently unbanked and empowering them to make cheap mobile payments, access previously unattainable financial and other services, and join the modern world will give the global economy a significant boost.
We view the AI movement as an offensive strategy to enhance individual power and productivity, and help bring our lives back into balance by reducing our workloads. At the same time, blockchain is our defense against AI innovation spinning out of control and threatening our rights. We need both to move ahead safely.
Today's challenge—How to stay relevant
Just when workers started to adjust to the post-COVID new world order, Perplexity's search and Open AI's chatbot emerged at the end of 2022, and suddenly, we all had to confront yet another seismic disruption. As the numbers above indicate, AI will lead to a significant consolidation of jobs in large companies and institutions. It is now a given that most administrative, customer service, software development, research, and other knowledge-based work in large companies will be handled by AI bots. We hope that the world of government agencies and bureaucracies follows their lead.
While this new round of creative destruction will require some to hop, skip, and jump a bit in the job market, our bet (supported by the history of innovation) is that AI and dApps will continue to foster thousands of Web3 companies (e.g., the Cryptonite 300) that will create a number of jobs that ultimately surpass the jobs destroyed. But yes, the handoff could get a little bumpy.
Beyond generative AI, professionals must adjust their approach to an increasingly decentralized world that operates more peer-to-peer and talent-to-fan, tokenizing ownership in IP, real-world assets, and effectively eliminating most intermediaries and their associated fees. Overall, transactions will become cheaper and faster, and assets will be tradable 24/7.
The following are three observations to help innovation professionals stay relevant and avoid falling through the Web3 cracks.
AI is not here to destroy you; it is here for you to embrace and master and become a more valuable professional. If you want to stay in the game, you should be aware of how the emerging AI tools that collapse workloads and offload tasks to AI bots work. As an example, we believe that the combination of Grok, Perplexity, and Grammarly saves 70% of our research and editing time while offering significantly more highly valuable content. As many of our Rap readers have learned, most of the post links connect to AI-generated results, further supporting our opinions and allowing our readers to delve deeper into the subject matter if they wish
One must also stay up on the bigger enterprise AI apps in your industry. For example, theCryptonite 300 companies represent AI pioneers in software development, drug discovery, customer service, business intelligence, and across most sectors and disciplines.
With this wisdom in mind, professionals must focus on developing specific, validated skill sets and a track record of creating positive production and business outcomes to survive in the new decentralized world. Professionals must demonstrate that they can work independently, with minimal support, and utilize the latest fashionable new apps to execute tasks on time and within budget.
Steve Jobs often said that any product encompasses the customer's complete experience from purchasing, unpacking, learning, and using the product. 'You've got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it,' Steve told the attendees of Apple's 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) just after rejoining the company he cofounded. (See clip below of Steve handling a tough question on the subject in his classic style).
‘You just can’t please all the people all the time,’ says Steve.
For example, Steve designed and patented the way we unbox our iPhones as a 'ritual', as 'theatre', complete with the subtle air suction (or 'whoosh') you feel/hear when lifting the lid. These subtleties build anticipation and 'impute’ premium craftsmanship, emotional connection, and desirability. 'When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product,' Steve explained.
What Steve meant by 'imputing' means applying the same level of rigor to how they present their products, as they do to design and develop them. The art of 'imputing' qualities, values, and perceptions to a product, as Apple has done so magically for years, cannot be replicated by AI bots. The main reason is that the entire creative process Steve is referring to requires a heavy dose of customer empathy. AI bots will always be just tools; they lack nuance, genuine creativity, and the ability to connect with real customers. Developing your skill and expertise in areas where no AO bot can travel is the answer to staying relevant.
“Who you know, what you know, and when you know it is the currency of Silicon Valley.” —Michael Moritz, Partner, Sequoia Capital, a seed investor in Google, YouTube, PayPal, and many other greatest hits.
Going global while staying social
Michael Moritz’s adage above will always remain the same. The challenge for the Web3 professional is how to stay connected and open to serendipitous new relationships and partnerships in a more isolated, less face-to-face, AI-powered world. The most valuable information has always traveled by word of mouth, close to its point of origin. We cannot just impute and develop deep relationships looking into a Zoom screen.
A 30-year analysis by the University of Michigan of 14,000 college students in the 2000s revealed 40% lower empathy scores compared to those in the 1980s and 1990s, with a significant decline in empathic concern and a smaller but notable decrease in perspective-taking. Fantasy showed a slight decline, while personal distress increased slightly.
Gallup and Pew Research 2023-2024 studies show that while 60% of US workers prefer hybrid or remote work for flexibility, 43% report feeling less connected to coworkers, 25% remote loneliness.
One way to approach this challenge is from a mental health perspective. Just as young adults today have lost empathy by swapping in-person buddy time for online interactions, we naturally lose empathy for our teammates and customers if we mirror these patterns. We can all see this is already happening, the evidence is in, and everyone is losing.
The solution is to purposely identify the people in your professional sphere who mean the most to your success (or whom you enjoy the most) and consciously meet up with them for a nice breakfast, lunch, or after-work beer. Team lunches, end-of-the-week socials, and any other rituals to meet up in person from time to time are beneficial for both business and mental health. Serendipity overwhelmingly happens in person.
To fill in the ‘what you know and when you know it’ box, proactively research what might be the top few live events each year, or programs where you can meet people, keep up with your industry, develop some leads, and build your expertise and reputation.
The bottom line is that in the Web3 era, we must view ourselves as self-contained bodies of AI-savvy expertise, professional connections, and resources that can be successfully applied within a growing company. More often than not, we will resemble the contractors of old, with multiple clients, rather than the employee of just one. However we do it, let's commit to getting together from time to time to talk business and have some fun.
Who you know, what you know, and when you know it is the currency of the Silicon Valley. Share the wealth with the ones you love. ❤️
Serendipity awaits! Come hang out with the New Captains of Industry at Silicon Valley '25
Distinguished Members of the Cryptonite community:
Cryptonite cordially invites our readers to the first annual Silicon Valley '25 (SV'25). SV'25 is an invitation-only gathering of 600 CEOs and founders from the Cryptonite 300 top Web3 private companies, their venture capital backers, as well as distinguished members of the business press, bloggers, analyst communities, and other industry thought leaders.
Bitcoin King, Tim Draper, will be at SV'25 for a fireside chat with fellow Silicon Valley OG and Cryptonite founder and editor Tony Perkins on why he thinks BTC is going to $250,000, and cohost some of the session.😎👍🏼
Come join the conversation
The SV'25 program centers on conversations between entrepreneurial thought leaders and risk capitalists about how Web3 innovation can create new efficiencies, opportunities, and wealth and further decentralize power away from institutions we no longer trust.
Three Cryptonite 100 top Founders/CEOs and two VCs will present and participate in an interactive conversation on topics hosted by top members of the technology business press.
How quantum computing ignites breakthroughs in AI, materials science, cryptography, drug discovery, and secure communications. More from Gok3.
The Bitcoin Metaphor and the downsizing of Wall Street. Where DeFi and TradFi meet. More from Grok
The tokenization of real-world assets, including real estate, public stocks and bonds, fine art, and VC equity investments. More from Grok3
Should we create a digital USD to compete with China’s digital yuan (e-CN¥)? What role do stablecoins play, and are they viable over the long run? More from Grok3
Can Hollywood and corporate media survive the Creator Economy, the artist-to-fan token model, and AI-powered creativity? More from Grok3
Farm-to-fork certified organic food for all, with sustainable water, forest, and agricultural management along the way. More from Grok3
How AI, armies of bots, and predictive analytics will remake the modern corporation. More from Grok3
How professional service firms survive AI automation—or not. More from Grok3
AI-powered drugs, therapy, and diagnostics will create exceptional patient service and health outcomes. More from Grok3
How AI and autonomous AI-powered robots, killing drones, and robotaxis - Oh my! More from Grok3
Do we have nothing to fear but fear itself? Mass job elimination and self-annihilation? More from Grok3
We would be honored if you could join us at Silicon Valley ‘25 and participate in the ultimate insider event. There is no other event on the planet that will illustrate where global Silicon Valley innovation is taking the world. There are only 600 tickets available, so act now!
SV’25 is presented by Voting Block USA (VB USA), a 501 c3 non-profit, nonpartisan, grassroots project dedicated to educating the public on how Web3 innovation will impact our daily lives and professional futures. VB USA is supported by The Draper Family Trust and Draper Associates and produced by Cryptonite Ventures.
The Cryptonite Weekly Rap is a reader-supported publication. We appreciate our paid subscribers who keep our research and editing engines chugging.🚂
Well after waiting for more then 4 years I am happy that the CPRO Project is back on track.