Krypto tribalisiert. KI enttribalisiert.

AI and cryptocurrency are often grouped together, but the reason they’re lumped in isn’t because they’re similar..it’s because they’re two halves that do what the other cannot. One tries to sharpen boundaries between fuzzy property on the internet; the other tries to break down and scavenge what had no way of being combined before. The ground has been liquified, but fences are going up.

This essay explores how crypto tribalizes while AI de-tribalizes, and what that means for the middle class of creative work being squeezed between them. The two technologies are already hybridizing: AI artists demanding IP rights borrowed from crypto principles, crypto NFTs dissolving into undifferentiated slop.

As styles become more profitable than hard work (in the same way platforms make more money than the things they platform), what does that convergence look like in six years? Does the fence-building win, does the melding win? do they keep feeding each other?