BOOMERS are the Generation that will be last to decide whether there is a use case within crypto that will impact normal life or it will impact normal life without them noticing. WOKES are the culture that has fought for so long to discredit the idea, industry, and movement. They will realize that pieces are being built and are useful to help the rights that they/them/all stand for. UP ONLY started as a meme during the largest bull market the industry has seen thus far but is smarter than it seems, while commonly seen as a reference to $$$ value, it actually represents PROGRESS
boomers + wokes = up only
We will describe here a glimmer of hope as we crawl our way out of the deep dark hole of deceit, lies, and mismanagement that has crippled trust in the crypto industry during 2022. We will give a recap of the previous cycles of innovation and how each led to attracting a new 'type' of individual and the next 'type' was dependent on the last.
Subsequently, we will then present why the next wave of participants and their cohorts/alignments is the last frontier before we see the new tech/old tech merge and it no longer being contested.
Recap of previous cycles
From the inception of Bitcoin and the industry to being talked about more broadly as a larger group. This was the progression from specialists to the broader range of their peers. Still very nascent but a few articles were in the media and knowledge spread outside of the core group of 'founders'.
More common now that it had its core group of specialist followers that would spread the word outside of their circles. As you imagine, the circles of the core knowledge demographic were directly related to tech workers. The growth of the following subset was wider-reaching than mostly specialists to a collection of tech workers, entrepreneurs, and hobbyists.
There was now a very diverse cohort that had tentacles across all cultures. The epochal explosion the industry would need to take it to just over saturation point. This was the moment that those unfamiliar with tech got their first glimpse of the tech in a prehistoric operating state. Nevertheless, with value tied to tech, it drew in speculators from all walks of life. Not many would stay but enough to kindle the fire.
2018 - 2021
While there were now believers from all walks of life, these were few and far between in their relative groups. Likely not taken seriously by their peers depending on the lifestyles they were associated with. This was about to change as some breakthrough MEMES would entrench cultures and fully grasp the mindset of the next generations. We went fully mainstream this last cycle, NFT's brought artists, trendsetters, and a culture of creators. Meanwhile, DeFi captured TradFi's mind and showed that finance could be much more lightweight and transparent. We now have enough mindshare that the inevitability of this technology being intertwined into every aspect of our lives is only a matter of time. It just doesn't seem that way to most
What's Next?
There is still some pushback, especially after the very public blow-ups the industry saw in 2022. These come from what we will define as the last two big bosses due to their authority within the world. We will describe their reluctance, the importance, and what brings them on board over the next years.
Boomer
The Demographic: Ah, the Baby Boomers(people born from 1946 to 1964)! They come of age in the largest boom we have seen in the last few centuries. Where technology got exponentially better, but they were always slow to pick it up due to the world they were born in that was basically computer free. While life was humbler then, with less focus outside your given immediate environment. Crypto as a whole doesn't really make sense to the broader selection of the boomers and for due right. Why would something that is not tangible or is stored as bits be valuable outside of its realm? The world is fine as it is, the bank holds my money, I go to the grocery store to use that money, I use the apps on my devices and they work. These are all valid points and even more so conditioned thinking from deceptive behavior. It didn't all start out like this but incentives were aligned to create this end product.
This changes in the coming years as the younger generations that are digitally native start exposing the hidden obscure intricacies that can only be discovered by fresh eyes the systems that themselves were not built for. As the wool begins to be removed from their vision they will reluctantly need an alternative that can help them navigate. As the population ages, some adopt, others pass, and they will be the last to have fully known life before a percentage of their time was spent digitally and therefore understand the need for the tools that were being built from 2009 - the present.
Woke
The Culture: While we have seen widespread diversification of participants across the globe, so too has a culture that the overwhelming majority also viscerally HATES crypto. Woke culture has intercepted our world as a whole for better or worse. Some of the brightest minds subscribe to these ideals and want fairness in this world that ironically only crypto natives can appreciate. So why the disdain towards the industry? Well, we only have to look at the biggest feature of the technology, assigning value to bits and bytes! If you can theoretically produce value from nothing with relative ease, you attract opportunistic actors with questionable morals. What is the biggest feature is also the largest bug. With each cycle, there is around a 5% efficacy rate(a totally made-up number but you get the point) of users that stay after the trip. The other tourists go back to their daily lives either wrecked from the debris created by the demolishment of exuberance from months/year prior or simply bored from the lack of dopamine hits.
Why wouldn't they hate it with all that said? Of course they would but it's easy to dismiss the beauty of the bee after getting stung. What is missing is the path from reaction to revelation, once enough people can articulate the benefits that could be conceived from the toolkit. There is a realization that the same battles they fight could be prevented by embedding mechanisms into our digital infrastructure. Instead of fighting the issues, they could help rebuild from the ground up
Up
The Meme: In early 2021 a podcast was created and the name became a meme. Up Only was synonymous with the Zhupercycle, another meme created in a subsequent episode of the podcast. While only an idea(false but relevant at the time) it quickly became a belief for many as memories fade of the pain that was endured during the off years. Hell, maybe the majority had never felt the pain and was ignorant to the struggles OG's had suffered(they were just lucky after all). Yet in 2022, many of the believers got to feel that pain. Even the creator of the Zhupercycle meme was too long and ultimately lost everything.
While the money has evaporated, let's take a look to see if there is anything that still resembles an up-and-to-the-right chart. One particular metric always increases but it's not easy to see unless you have spent time on the ground. Developers, ideas, and projects always increase. If you are developing in the space you know that there is always work for talented individuals. Ironically we still are up only but most people don't realize it yet. The most active development is even happening on projects that have either just launched or haven't launched yet. A quick look at the most active Rust repositories over the last month shows two crypto projects in the top 5 - Sui and Aleo.
Just as DeFi was born at a time when most had identified the space as dead. In the next 2 years, we will open up scalable infrastructure, polished products, abstraction of clunky artifacts, and a narrative that you least expect will pop up that will seem dumb at first to most. In previous cycles it was conceivable to have a grasp of everything that was happening in the crypto world but this is no longer true. One can only meaningfully keep up with a couple of projects at a time, let alone ecosystems and frameworks.
Web2 companies now all have entire teams and products being built around Web3. With industry skeletons coming out of the closet in 2022, being transparent, not blindly trusting entities and a more resilient DeFi3.0 will be the norm.
The next time you hear the word crypto in an intriguing light will be the last. With the two bosses eventually slayed in the coming years. The technology will fully infiltrate society.
Wagmi? No, but it was never about making it. It was allowing everyone to have the tools to be on equal footing and not allow corruption by default. An unpopular opinion is the items that occurred in 2022 were actually the most beneficial over the last couple of years. It's darkest at dawn.
Cover Image
The image above(like my PP) is created with abraham.ai - an AI artwork generator
SEED: Boomer woke up
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