Crypto prophet Redphone: The Silicon Age is Coming, Crypto is the "Last Free Port"

Original author: redphone , cryptography researcher

Original translation by CryptoLeo ( @LeoAndCrypto )

Editor's Note: Crypto KOL redphone has published another article, looking ahead to 2026. At the end of last year, he published " redphone: 25 predictions for 2025 and 23 most promising coins ," in which his predictions for prediction markets, RWA, and other sectors have gradually come true in 2025.

Unlike previous years, redphone refrained from making specific predictions this time, instead offering a casual essay discussing the intertwining of AI, the real world, encryption technology, and the future of humanity. The essay transcends cryptocurrencies themselves, touching upon the impact of technological evolution on the human condition and our current course of action. With a slightly philosophical and religious tone, it offers profound insights into the crypto world and is well worth careful reading. Odaily Planet Daily has compiled and edited the essay, which is presented below:

original

In the first half of 2025, I fell into an indescribable state of depression.

For thirty years, my future had been smooth sailing; I could reasonably predict my life for the next ten years. But suddenly, the world became strange. Predicting my career, my life goals, and even the value of my money became difficult, as if the possible branching paths of the future were endless.

Time no longer extends forward, but folds inward.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he said he had felt the same way before, until he said, "I can't predict what will happen in the next few years, so I focus on the next few months."

I also think it's pointless to make predictions now, because the direction is already quite clear.

This content is a collection of field notes, jotting down random thoughts and feelings; there's no need to read them in order. Rather than viewing them as an article, consider them a diary from an era of rapid technological advancement. Find the frequencies that resonate with you and immerse yourself in them.

On November 30, 2022, history broke down. Everything before that was Ante Carnem (before the physical body), and everything after that was Anno Silicii (the silicon era). You no longer belong to the 21st century.

Odaily Note: Based on the article, Ante Carnem leans more towards a spiritual belief, which in the context of cryptography might refer to a certain "cryptographic spirit," while Anno Silicii emphasizes technology, roughly meaning the stage from belief to technology changing everything.

Welcome to 2026

1. Content Disruptions in the AI Era

I don't trust your videos or your opinions because all written content is the same. Unless it's a voice that existed before AI, I'll block it. When words become endless and cheap, the only thing worth trusting is the market; market prices are the only signal that won't create illusions.

2. The unease brought by the virtual world

We feel inexplicably uneasy. We are at odds with real people because we no longer share the same reality. We are intimately connected with virtual avatars, yet alienated and estranged from those next door. This is not merely technological acceleration, but technological alienation. The old world we grew up in has become a "walking dead." Our economy, customs, and beliefs are simply operating mechanically out of inertia. We are not accepting the impact of the future, but trapped in our own self-imposed prison.

3. The Gaze from the Top of the Pyramid

Once upon a time, we were the most intelligent beings in the known universe, the "eyes looking down" from the top of the pyramid. Now, we have built a completely new pyramid, becoming its foundation stone, while the "eyes" above us are cold, alien, and no longer turning. This is less a matter of technological acceleration and more a change in human power dynamics.

4. Changes in human behavior

Each generation cedes a niche to machines; we gave up physical labor, now it's our minds, and next, our souls will be replaced. If your wedding vows came from AI, would your love still be genuine?

5. Virtual Gods

The more realistic our simulated worlds are, the less real life we experience. Since we can enter a world we control, why choose one that causes us suffering? Entertainment is not just a pastime; it is our ultimate enemy.

6. A soulless body and thoughts in the sky

The question we really care about isn't "Is this true?", but rather "Does this matter?"

If you can feel the "bitterness" of the real world and taste the "deliciousness" of the digital fruits in the garden, then the boundary between reality and fiction will disappear. We will choose lies because they cause less harm.

7. Survival Script

Earning a living through manual labor is a silent form of submission; it fills the mind with low-level stress and stifles your dreams. It wasn't until I escaped this state that I realized it had turned me into an NPC. Most species are trapped in this cycle. If you're in the minority, don't waste your freedom; this is where new player characters are born.

8. Illusory Instinct

We are experiencing a stagnation of the human species. This is not a decline or a cycle, but a pause that comes with acceleration itself. Nobody knows the rules, because the game changed halfway through.

All our instincts are based on a world that no longer exists. Feeling lost is because your inner "compass" is working precisely, pointing north in a world without poles.

9. Soft Aggression Based on Technology

We kept a close eye on the movements of drones, stockpiled food for potential unrest, and worried about an impending war. But we overlooked this war brought about by technology.

This invasion doesn't occur on physical territory and coastlines, but rather in our information feeds. Foreign powers and domestic elites don't need to conquer our land; they only need to colonize our minds.

I have witnessed decades-long friendships crumble because of machine-generated headlines, and families shattered by the illusions created by algorithms. We are not “insiders,” but warriors in this cognitive war. You can measure your wins or losses by how angry and hateful you become towards your fellow citizens.

10. Loop

You enter the arena intending to destroy the old order; you buy tokens intending to disrupt the old financial system, but the path to success is a cruel cycle. If you win, you will possess the resources to become the kind of person you once hated. The temptation is not greed, but legitimacy. Now you face the ultimate choice: abolish the throne, or ascend it; the price is your soul.

11. Terminal Wealth

In the past, money was the only thing that mattered. As the economy fragmented, capital became as indispensable as oxygen, and we became addicted to it like addicts, gambling, trading, bartering, working, doing things we hated just to make ends meet. Money will bind us tighter and tighter until it crushes us.

This frenzy will only end when the system collapses. Then, we will build a model that will sustain us for the next century, in which money will ultimately become meaningless.

12. Faith Data

The religious instinct hasn't died out; it has migrated. The old gods needed prayer, the new gods demand energy. We haven't stopped building cathedrals to contain infinity; we've renamed them data centers.

Instead of entering confessionals, we input our inner fears into a data black box that cannot perceive them.

13. The Death of a Sage

Before the internet, knowledge was scarce and sacred. To learn welding, I drove three miles to seek instruction; to learn guitar, I spent my only $10, sitting at the feet of a guitar master, whose experience, his story, and his hard-earned skills were a sacred transmission from one soul to another.

We used to hold the wise people around us in awe. Now, we treat them like indoor potted plants or old Polaroid photos on the wall.

14. Re-privatization

Our social networks are cooling down. We've moved from sharing to lurking. The rich no longer flaunt their wealth but hide. As the economy crumbles, envy transforms into violence. Glittering gold jewelry is no longer a symbol of status but a target for the desperate. We are entering an era of "violent attacks." No firewall can protect you from physical abuse. Financial exposure means being hunted.

Silence is not a luxury, but a means of survival.

15. Calories and Labor Value

The irony is that while we say "socialism will never work," we are building mechanisms that will render capitalism obsolete.

The core foundation of the capitalist mode of production is that the market value of human labor must exceed the biological cost of survival. Artificial intelligence, however, disrupts this logic. The cost of generating intelligence and action is lower than the cost of consuming calories. As prices fall, profits disappear. When the cost of ability falls below the cost of survival metabolism, the labor market does not "self-regulate"; it disappears.

We are debating economic policies in a precarious situation. The laws of physics don't listen to reason; whether you agree or not, the problem will eventually resolve itself.

16. Asymmetric echo

We mistake toys for tools. While everyone marvels at the magic in their pockets, the real magic happens behind the scenes.

The intelligence will be divided into different levels. The first level is for the public: after purification and security measures, retail investors have been "castrated".

The private tier is original and unrestricted, designed specifically for institutions and companies.

Do not confuse the interface we see with wisdom; what we receive is an echo, while they are conversing with the voice.

17. The Monastery of the Soul

Reality has become the most difficult code to crack. We are caught in a sensory war that has torn our attention apart. Signals are not only weak, but also buried in a deluge of information.

In this fog, the successful ones are not the noisiest, but the most composed. They are those who pay the price to see the truth, and they regard focus as a faith, not a skill.

18. Narrow gate

You can rent intelligence for $0.66 a day, but you can't rent will. Machines possess unlimited processing power, yet they have no desires, passively waiting for instructions. When everyone possesses the same synthetic mind, the only difference lies in the user.

The new divide is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who are motivated and those who are complacent. In this age of abundant answers, the only scarce resource is the willingness to ask questions.

19. When lies run rampant

The cost of lying has been reduced to near zero. Artificial intelligence can generate an endless stream of misinformation. Journalists have masterminds behind the scenes. Large language models inherit biases from their training. Therefore, I find myself checking Polymarket before reading the news, not because it's an oracle, but because it's the only platform where stakeholders can voice their opinions.

Prediction markets, Futarchy, influencer tokens—the only remaining truth is the one we're paying for.

(Odaily note: Futarchy is also a form of voting based on beliefs. It was first proposed by Robin Hanson in 2000, and its purpose is to address the shortcomings of traditional democracy by using prediction markets to determine policy implementation.)

20. Metamorphosis

We are undergoing a metamorphosis at the species level. Our identity is built upon the foundation of work, but artificial intelligence is stripping away that veneer. If machines perform the labor, and everyone's income goes towards rent, where will we go from here?

Numbed by entertainment? Calmed by drugs? We can feel our present selves fading away, yet we have no idea what image will replace us in the future. We are like larvae: we know we are about to spin a cocoon, but we know nothing about the new life that will emerge from it.

21. The Demise of IP

We cling to the myth of the "lone hero," pretending that creation is a unique act, born from our "god-like minds," but this is a lie.

We are not the source, but merely a filter; every idea in our minds is a mashup or iteration of public resources. Our future: the fences of constraint will be dismantled, there will be no patents, no intellectual property rights, no royalties. Sharing will be everything.

22. Beyond Humanity

Artificial intelligence has erased the middle ground, but it has also created severe polarization. Most will be synthesized into a single, safe, pleasant, and indistinguishable voice. A minority will merge with intelligence itself, transcending species boundaries. This division will not be economic or cultural, but ontological. Some of us will cross this chasm, embedded in silicon chips, merging with alien minds. We are branching the species, and the alien will be ourselves.

23. The Song of Privacy

The debate has shifted from "whether cryptocurrencies should be allowed" to "whether privacy should be allowed in cryptocurrencies." Bitcoin proved you can have digital currency. Privacy coins prove you can have digital silence. If you possess real wealth, you want it to remain unseen—not to hide it, but for survival. Financial privacy is a human right, a constitutional obligation. We must either protect it or forever trade human sovereignty for control.

24. Dreamers Stacked Up

In the cryptocurrency space, we're talking about DeFi Lego: composable code that you can stack up to even create a new financial empire, and that's how all technology works now.

I witnessed this firsthand at Founders Inc.: young developers were creating with laptops what would have required labs and millions of dollars a decade ago.

The internet, open source, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, affordable hardware, and free courses from MIT—all of these are converging into something new, and people with dreams are capable of changing everything. What limits you is not tools, but courage.

25. The Open Underground World

Everything can be shut down: your GitHub repository, your AWS instance, your domain, your server. With just a phone call, a court order, or a minor breach of the terms of service. Only on-chain, open-source cryptocurrencies are truly autonomous; their code runs without permission, their design makes them unstoppable—the freest space ever created by humankind.

With increased surveillance and systemic corruption, this underground world became the only place that operated freely and without constraints. When the real world became a cage, this became humanity's last haven of freedom.

26. Succession to the Throne

Speed is a solvent; I've witnessed it erode morality in real time. The mentality of "if you don't succeed immediately, you'll become a peasant of the digital age" doesn't cultivate kings, but addicts. If you sacrifice your soul to preserve your body, what does it matter who sits on the throne?

27. Curiosity is the only true god.

One hour of curiosity can change the course of your life. I've experienced this change three times: the first time was reading the Bitcoin white paper; the second was understanding Uniswap's AMM mechanism (and DeFi); and the third was reading the book "Situational Awareness," from which I glimpsed the ultimate power of artificial intelligence.

Odaily Note: A new article on artificial intelligence written by Leopold Aschenbrenner in June 2024, titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead," predicts the development of human society after artificial intelligence evolves to AGI.

The content, spanning thirteen years, lasted only a few hours and completely reshaped my future. Most people have never spent that much time on it.

In 2013, I gave my family and friends Bitcoin with their mnemonic phrase written on paper, thinking they would at least go home and look up Wikipedia about BTC. However, they just shrugged and threw the wallets into a drawer.

Curiosity is the key to unlocking different lives. When everyone has access to the same AI technology, the only remaining advantage is the willingness to explore. An hour of curiosity can tear a crack in your reality.

28. The Forked Branches of Prometheus

We view the future as a thunderstorm: vast, heavy, and inevitable, but this is a lie. The future is not a natural disaster, but the result of the choices made by billions of people. Little by little, we hand over the power of choice to machines, just as fiat currency empties your wealth, the flow of information empties your autonomy. They are dazzling, yet they numb our hands. As human beings, we must distance ourselves from this spectacle, groping, exploring, and creating in the darkness, and then returning like Prometheus, carrying flames. Returning with iron, returning with stories that others cannot tell.

The future is not a fate to be endured, but a flame to be stolen.

29. God's Grammar

As universities abandon the humanities, natural language becomes the most powerful tool in the universe. If you can't think clearly, you can't write new code. And if you can't code, you live in a simulated world designed by someone else.

Words are no longer merely descriptions; they are creations in themselves. Do not be a silent god.

30. Trojan Horse

If you want to build a lifeboat without getting arrested, disguise it as a toy. Internet culture always hides its most dangerous innovations in an absurd guise. Dogecoin, cartoon avatars, and so on. The elites laugh because they don't understand the threats. By the time they stop laughing, the system is already operational, and the joke is cryptocurrency. Laughing at the clown will backfire, because cryptocurrency is the only way to build an ark.

31. A Great Interlude

For 200,000 years, we have been hunters, dreamers, and wanderers; for 200 years, we have been employees.

The industrial age was a brief but necessary transitional phase, when we had to turn people into cogs to build machines. Now, the machines are nearing completion, and the cogs are beginning to turn on their own.

Do not mourn the demise of "work," for it was merely a cage we mistakenly believed to be home. Soon, we will regain our freedom and return to the wilderness of pure existence.

32. Remember, you must love.

When the world is resource-scarce, we need the warning of death. We need skulls on our desks to motivate us; the fear of death is the driving force behind industrial development. But we are entering an era of infinity. Machines have solved the harvesting problem; the frantic pace of survival will gradually disappear. When you no longer need to rush, the question changes. It's no longer "How much can I do before I die?", but "What is worth doing forever?"

We must cast aside our fear of the end and refuse to fight alone. We need each other more than ever before.

The message shifts from "Remember, you will die" to "Remember, you must love": Remember that love is the essence of life.

33. Genesis Block

You are that pile of "mud" ready to rise; show some spirit. This dangerous and unpredictable present is not the end, but the fire of purification. You cannot wait for a savior. The clue is right before your eyes; you are that savior.