Rocky_BTC

Recently, I read a paper titled "The AI Layoff Trap" 📑, which is quite chilling. This paper was co-authored by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University, and it should keep those CEOs who are crazily laying off employees due to AI up at night. 🧐 The core logic is actually quite simple: large companies replace human labor with #AI, which seems to save costs, but at the same time, they are eliminating their future customers. Laid-off employees stop consuming, and the more people are laid off, the weaker the overall market's purchasing power becomes. In the end, companies will find that they have produced products, but no one can afford to buy them. This principle is something every corporate executive understands; the economic logic is not complex. But the question arises: why does no one stop? The paper describes this as a prisoner's dilemma: • If you don't automate, your competitors will • They lower costs, cut prices, and seize market share • If you don't take action, you will be eliminated • So every company, knowing that collective destruction is inevitable, can only grit their teeth and proceed The researchers proved that this is a real-time prisoner's dilemma game. Let's look at the actual data 📊 to see how crazy it is: • Block laid off nearly half of its employees this year (close to 5,000 people), and Jack Dorsey directly stated that AI made these positions unnecessary, predicting that most companies will reach the same conclusion next year. • Salesforce replaced 4,000 customer service positions with AI. • Goldman Sachs deployed programming tools, allowing one engineer to do the work of five. • By 2025, over 100,000 tech workers will be laid off, with more than half explicitly due to AI. • 80% of jobs in the U.S. can have their tasks automated by AI. The research team tested all common solutions, but ultimately they all led to failure! • Universal Basic Income (UBI)? It doesn't change the automation incentives for any company. • Capital gains tax? It adjusts profit levels but doesn't change the decision to replace workers at the task level. • Collective bargaining? It can't be maintained because automation is always the dominant strategy. Even more frightening, they discovered a "Red Queen Effect." Better AI won't solve the problem; it will only accelerate it. Every company is pursuing faster automation to seize market share, but in the end, everyone automates, and the advantages cancel each other out, leaving only destroyed demand. The only potentially effective solution proposed by the research is to "impose a Pigovian tax." An automation tax charged per task. Companies would be forced to pay for the demand destroyed by each worker they replace. From an economic perspective, this would trigger a more deadly chain reaction: a deflationary spiral. Let's look at this logical chain: Step 1: Decline in wage income • AI replaces workers, unemployment rises • Current employees fear layoffs and hesitate to ask for raises • Total wage income in society continues to decline Step 2: Collapse of effective demand • Keynes already said that the core of economic growth is effective demand • Declining wages = declining purchasing power = businesses can't sell products • Reduced business income leads to further layoffs and cost-cutting Step 3: Price-wage deflationary spiral • Companies are forced to lower prices to reduce inventory • Price cuts lead to shrinking profits, resulting in more layoffs • Wages decline further, consumption weakens • This forms a self-reinforcing death spiral Step 4: Overcapacity and liquidity trap • Production efficiency greatly increases due to AI, but no one is buying • Even with zero-interest loans, companies are unwilling to expand production • Central bank interest rate cuts become ineffective, and the monetary policy transmission mechanism breaks down • The economy falls into a Japan-style lost decade The terrifying aspect of this logical chain is that almost all traditional economic tools become ineffective: • Lowering interest rates? Companies don't lack money; they lack demand. • Fiscal stimulus? The government gives money, but companies continue to lay off workers, and the money doesn't reach the real economy. • Printing money? The money all goes into asset markets, making it even harder for ordinary people to afford things. • Trade wars? The world is experiencing deflation; protectionism will only accelerate the recession. The above situation is very similar to the current Chinese economy; we can see this by observing the domestic economy now. There is serious overcapacity in manufacturing, PPI continues to decline, and CPI is close to zero. It's not that we don't want to stimulate consumption; it's that ordinary people have no money, and companies are still cutting costs and laying off workers. This is a typical deflationary situation. 🧐 And AI is accelerating the global movement towards this process: • Unlike previous technological revolutions that created new jobs, AI directly replaces intellectual labor. • The replaced white-collar workers are the main consumers, and their collapse in purchasing power has a huge impact. • The speed at which AI improves efficiency far exceeds the speed at which new demand is created. • The final result: overproduction + insufficient demand = long-term deflation. The only similar scenario in history was the Great Depression of 1929. At that time, production efficiency also increased due to the electrification revolution, but workers' wages did not keep up, leading to a collapse in demand. The New Deal took 10 years to recover, and ultimately it was the demand from World War II that truly brought the economy back. This AI revolution, the paper warns ⚠️, may be more dangerous than the Great Depression because: • The speed of replacement is faster and the scope is broader. • Globalization prevents countries from being able to stand alone. • The central bank's toolbox has already been emptied by 2008 and 2020. • Debt levels are much higher than in 1929, and fiscal space is limited. The final conclusion is sobering: this AI revolution is not simply a transfer of wealth from workers to bosses. Both sides lose. Workers lose income, and companies lose customers. This is a pointless loss, and the market mechanism itself cannot prevent it. Even more critically, this will trigger systemic economic deflation, and once deflation expectations form, it is as difficult to reverse as a black hole. The lessons from Japan are right in front of us. I believe this logic applies equally to the cryptocurrency industry. When AI begins to replace developers, operations, and community management on a large scale, Web3 project teams may also need to consider: can your token economic model withstand this wave of demand collapse? If users have no money, who will take over the market's Tokens? 🧐

The recent weather is particularly suitable for outdoor meditation 🧘! Let’s talk about the meditation thoughts under the big tree tonight, "Investing is a conversation with time." At eleven o'clock at night, the city gradually quiets down. I take my yoga mat and go to the thickest tree in the community park. This tree is at least several decades old, with rough bark and lush branches and leaves, casting mottled shadows under the streetlight. I sit cross-legged, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. The night air carries the fragrance of grass and trees, with the occasional sound of insects and the croaking of frogs in the pond. At this moment, it feels like the world consists only of me and this tree. During meditation, thoughts often drift away. Tonight, they drifted towards investing. Isn’t our investment like this tree? Rooting down is the sedimentation of knowledge. The tree's root system is buried deep underground, unseen by others, yet it determines how high it can grow and how long it can live. It silently absorbs nutrients and water from the soil, regardless of whether the surface is calm or experiencing droughts and floods. The "roots" of investing are our understanding of the industry, the company, and the essence of business. It is the countless nights of reading, thinking, and researching, the investment framework and principles we establish. This part of the work is tedious, long, and offers no immediate returns. Just like the roots of a tree, we do not rejoice because it has grown a millimeter today. But it is these invisible "roots" that determine whether our investment portfolio will be uprooted in a market storm or remain steady. Growing upwards is the patient wait. A tree does not grow into a towering giant in a day. It goes through the seasons: budding in spring, flourishing in summer, shedding leaves in autumn, and hibernating in winter. It does not rush to succeed but follows the rhythm of nature, completing one cycle of growth each year. The "growth" of investing is the power of compound interest. It requires time and patience. When we buy into a good company, it’s like planting a seed. We cannot expect it to bloom and bear fruit tomorrow. We need to give it time to grow alongside the development of the business. Market fluctuations are like the changing of the seasons; they are inevitable. A bull market is summer, where everyone is joyful; a bear market is winter, where everything is bleak. But true investors understand how to hibernate in winter, sow seeds in spring, rather than chase highs in summer and panic in autumn. Lush branches and leaves are a manifestation of perspective. When a tree grows tall enough, its branches and leaves reach towards a broader sky, providing shade for more people. Its value is no longer just in itself but in its impact on the entire ecosystem. The "lush branches and leaves" of investing are our investment perspective and vision. When I no longer focus solely on the daily gains and losses of my account but start to think about how investing can align with social value and trends of the times, my perspective opens up. What I invest in is no longer just codes and numbers, but the future we believe in. This perspective allows us to remain clear-headed amidst market noise, to be fearful when others are greedy, and to be greedy when others are fearful. As the meditation ends, I open my eyes and look at the silent tree before me. It still stands there quietly, as if nothing has happened, yet as if it has just had a profound conversation with me. Investing may just be such a conversation with time. We learn patience from time, laws from nature, and calmness from within. May we all be like this tree, rooting down, growing upwards, and in the long river of time, become the person we want to be, while also reaping the rich gifts that time offers. Good night, world. Good night to everyone who is practicing on the path of investing. 🙏

Pharos recently secured $44 million in Series A funding, and the mainnet launch is also in full swing. What everyone is most concerned about is not just watching the excitement, but how to get a piece of the action. I believe it's worth positioning early with @Farooxyz, which is the flagship protocol for liquidity staking in the @pharos_network ecosystem. Once the mainnet stabilizes, it will be the core path to capturing ecosystem dividends. 🧐 First, let's look at its background; #Faroo has a star-studded lineup. #Faroo is driven by #Bifrost, which has been deeply involved in the staking infrastructure field for six years, with a solid security foundation that provides strong support for Faroo's development. In terms of positioning, Faroo can be considered the "Federal Reserve" of the Pharos ecosystem. As one of the first core members of the Pharos RealFi Alliance, it has official backing and controls the lifeblood of liquidity, deeply participating in the construction of the entire Pharos ecosystem. Faroo's mission is very clear: to convert the throughput of Pharos's high-performance public chain into visible Real Yield in users' pockets. With battle-tested security provided by Bifrost and the underlying #RWA empowerment from Pharos, Faroo's professionalism is evident. This time, Faroo is focused on becoming the "super yield enhancer" within the Pharos ecosystem. Previously, when we played with liquidity staking (like stETH), the yield mainly relied on the on-chain staking rewards. But Faroo's innovation this time lies in the core concept of "one token, dual engines," combining Staking + RWA for a dual drive, effectively allowing one investment to earn two types of interest. Faroo's yield system has a very clear division of labor, with three major product matrices each serving its purpose: • $stPROS: The core mixed yield liquidity staking token, integrating native crypto staking rewards with underlying RWA cash flow yields, serving as the flagship product of the entire system. • $tbPROS: Anchored to on-chain treasury bond yields, providing stable dollar-pegged returns corresponding to interest income from real-world assets. • LP Vault: An automated market-making strategy vault that captures fee income from active on-chain trading. Together, these three form a unified, composable on-chain yield system, allowing users to maintain liquidity while obtaining diverse sources of income. As we all know, the biggest pain point of RWA currently is the high learning cost. For example, mainstream tokenized U.S. Treasury products generally have high thresholds and complicated operations. Faroo simplifies all these cumbersome processes; users only need to stake $PROS to simultaneously obtain on-chain staking rewards and RWA cash flow yields through $stPROS, and access treasury-level stable returns through $tbPROS, enabling ordinary users to participate in RealFi with just one click. For ordinary users, the three core points are: ✅ Stability: The yield from $tbPROS comes from real RWA assets (like treasury bonds), not from printing money for subsidies. ✅ Liquidity: $stPROS can still be traded or used as collateral at any time after staking, with no liquidity lock-up. ✅ Early: Understand and position early, so you can enter as soon as it officially opens. It is important to note that according to the official tokenomics design of Pharos, the staking inflation rate will be 0% for the first six months after the mainnet launch, and there will be no native staking rewards released during the cold start phase. Starting from the seventh month, approximately 5% annualized staking rewards will begin to be released, and Faroo's formal staking business will also officially launch in line with this rhythm. At that time, the complete yield system of Hybrid Yield will be fully opened, which is worth paying attention to in advance. Overall, if Pharos is the foundation of RealFi, then Faroo is the steward that helps you collect rent. Don't just focus on those nested protocols; projects that are supported by underlying assets and backed by a mainnet ecosystem are the directions worth positioning for the steady faction this year. Keep a close eye on the official launch timeline of Faroo; opportunities are for those who are prepared. 🏃‍♂️💨

#Gate's thirteenth anniversary has been a remarkable journey! After listening to @Han_Gate's speech, I felt deeply moved and gained a lot! The unveiling of the Red Bull F1 car 🏎️ also signifies a transmission of spirit; Gate's successful crossover with Red Bull F1 truly embodies the competitive spirit of "being a step ahead and leading change." I sincerely wish Gate to uphold the spirit of Red Bull, charging forward like a bamboo shoot, and continue to write the glorious legend that belongs to champions! 🧐 @Gate @Gate_zh @Godot_gate @JoeyJia11

The next bull market may no longer be a human-driven bull market, but rather an expansion of the trading community from tens of millions of humans to billions of AI Agents! This grand vision for the future is being paved by #OKX with its two powerful tools, Onchain OS and X Layer, laying the groundwork for the upcoming new bull market! In the future, each of us can create our own exclusive AI assistant through crayfish 🦞, autonomously making money, consuming, and investing on-chain, which is the trend of the times! 🧐 @okxchinese @star_okx @zakk_okx @Jiajia_OKX @Haiteng_okx @mia_okx

Due to the KelpDAO theft incident, the entire #Aave has withdrawn $7.16 billion in TVL today, dropping from $44.76 billion on the 18th to $37.6 billion now 📉, a steep decline! The price of Aave has also fallen from $118 to $92, with a drop of over 22% at one point! Old DeFi is experiencing the "quantum threat moment" of the AI era. With the rapid development of Anthropic Mythos and other AIs in the field of reverse security vulnerability audits, smart contracts may face significant challenges. Some less active old DeFi projects, with outdated code updates and little care after issuing tokens, may become cash machines for hackers in the face of such powerful AIs 🏧! I foresee that the biggest black swan of this round may be the collapse and reshaping of the #DeFi system brought about by #AI, likely leading to another Luna moment, just a warning! ⚠️🧐