I remember when blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and the metaverse were the promises of the future. They sold us on the idea that they were going to change everything: the way we work, trade, and even live. It seemed like we were on the brink of a revolution. But here we are, a few years later, and those promises still haven’t materialized.
The metaverse was envisioned as a digital parallel world where we would all interact with avatars, buy virtual land, and attend concerts without leaving home. Today, that idea is as stuck as the old Second Life communities. While concepts like Fortnite and Roblox are successful, the grand metaverse we were sold hasn’t come anywhere close, and those platforms were already thriving before the word “metaverse” became trendy. For many companies, it has turned into a dead-end project—huge investments in platforms that users didn’t adopt as quickly as expected. Anyone remember Facebook’s work meetings in the metaverse? Exactly.
Blockchain was the technology that was supposed to revolutionize the financial system, remove intermediaries from banking, and provide absolute transparency to any transaction. However, aside from a few experiments in supply chains and cryptocurrencies, it hasn’t lived up to its promise. Real, useful, and scalable use cases have been minimal. In the end, blockchain got caught up in the “hype” of cryptocurrencies, where, instead of being a tool for making the economy fairer, it turned into a vehicle for speculation. Decentralization sounds great in theory, but most of the crypto exchanges that grew around it have proven to be just as centralized and vulnerable as the banks they supposedly wanted to dethrone.
And then there are cryptocurrencies. Do you remember when Bitcoin and Ethereum were “the future of money”? The “crypto bros” told us they were the answer to inflation, government control, and even the collapse of the financial system. But what we’ve seen is that cryptocurrencies move with the same speculative logic as traditional assets. What was sold as a safe haven during crises has proven to be even more volatile than stock markets. And to top it off, we’ve seen multiple scams and the collapse of exchanges like FTX, which wiped out people’s savings.
In the end, the metaverse, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies seem to have fallen victim to the classic technology cycle: initial hype, followed by a rapid adoption by investors who fear missing out on “the next big thing,” only to then crash into the harsh reality of the lack of massive use cases. This has all the hallmarks of a tech bubble that has burst. What remains is a shadow of what once was, but most of the capital and resources have evaporated.
We’ve gone through a case of pure “Darwinism,” where only the projects that made sense using these technologies have survived—and in many cases, they’ve done so successfully.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk about artificial intelligence.
AI is the technology that’s actually delivering on what the other tech promises failed to achieve. It’s integrating into our daily lives in ways that are already changing how we do things. From chatbots, to algorithms that predict what we want to buy before we even know it ourselves, to systems that automate tasks that used to take hours of human labor. Everything blockchain, crypto, and the metaverse promised to do, AI is doing faster and more effectively.
And here’s where I think the big shift is happening: AI isn’t just a tool, it’s a platform that’s transforming entire industries. Unlike the metaverse or cryptocurrencies, AI doesn’t need a parallel “market” to function. It doesn’t need to create an alternative reality or replace traditional money. It simply enhances what already exists.
AI isn’t just the next hype. It’s the technology that’s going to redefine the world—not just by improving efficiency, but by radically changing how we interact with knowledge, work, and the economy. If the metaverse and cryptocurrencies made us dream of an alternate future, AI is going to make us live in a very different one.
