Tracking Wealth Through the AI Lens
Tracking Wealth Through the AI Lens
I keep seeing the same headline, recycled in a dozen different ways: Why Gen X Struggles with Crypto? for TRADENATION:SOLANA by konhow, or "Boomers Baffled by Bitcoin," or "Are Millennials the Last Crypto-Native Generation?" It’s a neat, tidy narrative. It fits into the clean boxes we love to create for ourselves, the ones that define people by the year they were born.
But I’m here to tell you it’s the wrong story. It’s not just wrong; it’s an obsolete way of looking at the world. Asking what is Gen X or trying to pinpoint the exact Gen X age range to understand their tech habits is like trying to navigate a sprawling, dynamic digital city using a crumbling paper map from 1985. The map is irrelevant. The landscape has fundamentally changed.
The real story, the one that’s unfolding right now in the quiet hum of server farms and the frantic energy of Discord channels, is infinitely more exciting. We are witnessing the slow, steady dissolution of generational labels as we know them. The dividing line is no longer your birth year. It’s your mindset.
For decades, we’ve been obsessed with demographics. We’ve sliced and diced society into Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and now Generation Z. We ask, what years are Gen X? We debate the finer points of the Gen Z age range. Marketing teams have built entire empires on these classifications, assuming that a person born in, say, 1972 has a fundamentally different worldview than one born in 1992.
And for a while, that model worked. It was a useful shorthand. But a technology has emerged that doesn’t just challenge this model—it shatters it. I’m talking about crypto, but not just as a financial asset. I’m talking about the philosophy behind it: decentralization. This is the big idea, the one that changes everything.
Decentralization is a paradigm shift in how we organize, trust, and collaborate. It’s a move away from top-down, hierarchical systems (like banks, governments, and traditional corporations) and toward distributed, peer-to-peer networks where power is shared. We’re talking about decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs—put simply, think of them as online communities with a shared bank account and rules that are enforced by code, not by a CEO. This isn't just about finance it's a fundamental rewiring of trust and community and value, and it's happening at a speed that makes the old demographic boxes we used to use feel like ancient history.
When I first wrapped my head around this concept—that your mindset, not your birth year, defines your "generation"—I felt this incredible sense of liberation. It's the kind of idea that reminds me why I fell in love with technology in the first place. It tells us that your capacity to embrace the future isn’t predetermined by the music you listened to in high school.
So, who is Gen X in this new world? Who is a Millennial? Who is a Boomer? The answer is: it no longer matters. The only question that counts is, are you a centralist or a de-centralist?
Think about the invention of the printing press. Before Gutenberg, information was centralized. It was held by scribes, by the church, by the monarchy. You had to go to the powerful to get knowledge. The printing press didn't just create more books; it decentralized information itself. It empowered a new class of thinkers, creators, and revolutionaries who weren't defined by their lineage but by their ability to harness this new tool.
We are living through a similar moment right now. The new "native" isn't someone who grew up with a smartphone. The new native is a person of any age who intuitively grasps the power of networks over hierarchies. I’ve met people well into their 60s—technically Baby Boomers—who are more fluent in the language of DAOs and smart contracts than many 20-year-olds from Gen Z. They see the world as a series of interconnected nodes, not a pyramid.
Conversely, I’ve seen young people who, despite their digital fluency, remain staunchly centralist in their thinking. They may use the apps, but they still crave the validation and structure of old-world institutions. They are tourists in the new world, not citizens.
This brings us to a crucial point of responsibility. As we build these new systems, we can’t just code for efficiency; we have to code for humanity. How do we ensure these decentralized worlds are inclusive, fair, and don't just replicate the power imbalances of the old ones? What does a truly decentralized system of justice or identity even look like? These are the questions that should be keeping us up at night, far more than worrying about whether the Gen X generation is buying enough Ethereum.
The "struggle" isn't about age; it's about unlearning. It's about letting go of the idea that someone, somewhere, is in charge. It’s about embracing a world of fluid, voluntary, and digitally-native collaboration. I can almost feel it—the silent click of a transaction confirming on a blockchain, a digital handshake between two strangers on opposite sides of the planet, building something new without asking for permission. That’s not a generational phenomenon. That’s a human one.
The future won't be defined by a conflict between Gen X and Gen Z. It will be built by a new, self-selecting generation—a "Gen D" for Decentralized—composed of anyone, from Gen Alpha to the Silent Generation, who is brave enough to see the world not as it is, but as it could be.
Forget the year you were born. Forget the pop culture that defined your youth. All those labels are becoming baggage in a world that’s moving faster than our definitions can keep up with. The question is no longer "What generation are you?" but "What are you willing to build?" The most exciting part of this technological revolution isn't the technology itself. It's the radical permission it gives every single one of us, regardless of age, to become an architect of the future. So, pick up your tools. The blueprints are being drawn in real-time, and everyone is invited to help.