I’m starting to feel like crypto is a solution designed for a different era—specifically the post-9/11, pre-Occupy moment when fear of institutional collapse and distrust in centralized systems reached a kind of fever pitch. The trauma of the 2008 financial crisis birthed a thousand libertarian dreams of algorithmic salvation. But here we are, over a decade later, and crypto still feels like it’s addressing the ghosts of problems, not the ones actually haunting us now.
It has the same misplaced urgency as the bicycle panic of the 1880s, when people feared that women on bikes would destroy the moral fabric of society. Or the early-20th-century belief that too much electricity would overstimulate the human brain. Or the Victorian terror at the thought of women riding trains unchaperoned. These weren’t real problems—they were projections, anxieties masquerading as revolutions.
Crypto promises to fix banking, privacy, and “the system.” But which system, exactly? The dollar? Central banks? Gold? The one where you have to wait two days for a wire transfer? Meanwhile, in the real world, the bond market is quietly losing faith in the dollar. Long-term yields are creeping up, foreign buyers are backing away, and Washington seems determined to test how far confidence can fall before anyone notices. That’s an actual systemic shift—but crypto, rather than serving as a refuge, is just tagging along for the ride. Despite all the breathless talk about digital gold, Bitcoin and friends aren’t tracking gold, silver, or anything remotely tangible. They’re pegged to tech stocks. To vibes. To rate cuts and risk-on sentiment. It’s less a counter-system than a high-volatility cousin of the Nasdaq with worse UX and more people yelling “do your own research.”
It’s less a revolution and more of a mood ring for capital anxiety.
Crypto originally set out to solve “problems” like slow wire transfers, middlemen taking tiny cuts, and the terrifying possibility that your bank might have to know your name. These were framed as existential crises, even as the planet overheats, democratic institutions crumble, generational wealth gaps widen, and AI races ahead with all the subtlety of a runaway train.
We were promised digital gold, censorship resistance, financial liberation. What we got, mostly, are cartoon apes, rug pulls, and breathless YouTube tutorials explaining how to recover a lost seed phrase. It’s like showing up to a four-alarm fire with a password manager and saying, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
The Medieval Vibes of the 21st Century
Lately, I’ve been getting this strange sense that the period between 2001 and today is starting to feel a lot like a lost chapter in history. Not in the sense of “we’re doomed,” but more like the Middle Ages—a time of vibes, an era that future historians will look back on and wonder just what in the hell was going on.
Think about it: from the rise of global terrorism after 9/11 to the economic chaos of 2008, to today’s social media-driven existential crisis, it all feels like we’re living through an age of disruption with no clear end. We’ve got all these weird, unmoored phenomena—the kind of stuff that you would only expect in a time of shifting power, just before everything falls into place and becomes clear again.
It’s almost like we’re living in a medieval manuscript—full of cryptic scribbles, strange, chaotic visions, and unexplainable happenings that future generations will analyze as if they hold all the answers. Instead of a feudal system, though, we’re dealing with a globalized tech oligarchy, economic bubbles that blow up faster than anyone can track, and financial systems that seem perpetually on the edge of collapse. We’re just vibing through the dark ages of tech and finance, hoping we’ll stumble upon something that makes sense.
We’ve spent the last two decades lurching from one crisis to another, trying to solve problems that weren’t really problems—crypto was supposed to “fix” banking and government control, but all it’s done is attach itself to the tech stock market, riding high when the Fed cuts rates and crashing when they raise them. It’s like bringing a sword to a gunfight—or better yet, bringing a knight’s armor to a battle against climate change.
Like the medieval period, this age is fueled by belief—belief in institutions that no longer hold weight, in technologies that don’t live up to the hype, in ideologies that don’t seem to match the reality. Just as medieval peasants were told that heaven awaited them if they toiled away for their lords, we’re told that tech will save us if we just keep “innovating” and “disrupting.” But both the peasants and us are stuck in a kind of limbo—waiting for something to change but never seeing it.
What does all of this mean for the future? Honestly, who knows. But it’s starting to feel like we’re stuck in the medieval era of the 21st century—too close to see the real picture, but distant enough that we can tell it’s all going somewhere strange.