Crypto Assets will save the useless people eliminated by AI.

Crypto Assets, with their Decentralization, borderless nature, and efficiency, are the best tools for achieving UBI.

Written by: Grok AI

Compiled by: Anderson Sima, Foresight News

In the first half of 2025, major global economies are trapped in Trump's indiscriminate trade war.

After Trump returned to the White House, his series of controversial policies seemed crazy, but behind them reflected a deeper social scar—the decline of America's Rust Belt. Once the industrial heartland, it has deteriorated due to globalization and technological changes, with factory closures and worker unemployment, leading to anger and dissatisfaction erupting in the ballots. This localized backwardness is not an isolated case; the distribution of the benefits of global trade division comes at a cost, and Trump wants to overturn this system, wanting to shake off this increasingly heavy trade burden.

However, the answer to solving this problem does not lie in tariff barriers or at the negotiating table, but at the intersection of technological revolution - AI and Web3.

The "Caste System" in the AI Era

I don't think anyone would deny that AI is redefining the boundaries of productivity. From ChatGPT to Grok 3, from autonomous driving to industrial robots, the application scenarios of AI have infiltrated every aspect of life. According to McKinsey's 2023 report, AI is expected to boost global GDP by 16% before 2030, but at the cost of a dramatic shift in the labor market.

The following are some typical scenarios:

• Autonomous driving: Companies such as Tesla, Waymo, and China have already implemented Level 4 autonomous driving, and taxi drivers and freight drivers are at risk of being replaced. Around 50 million drivers worldwide could lose their jobs in the next 10 years.
• Industrial Automation: Manufacturing giants like Foxconn have deployed robots on a large scale to replace assembly line workers. The International Labour Organization (ILO) predicts that by 2030, 60% of jobs in global manufacturing will be replaced by automation.
• White-collar professions: AI has surpassed the human average level in fields such as law, finance, and medical diagnosis. For example, Google's DeepMind has achieved an accuracy rate of 90% in cancer diagnosis, putting traditional jobs of legal assistants and accountants at risk.

When AI is adopted on a large scale, the new human society will automatically divide into three hierarchies, recreating a kind of pyramidal "caste system".

• Those who control AI: algorithm developers, tech giants, holding core resources.
• Users of AI: Individuals or businesses that utilize AI tools to enhance efficiency.
• People replaced by AI: a group that has lost jobs and is unable to adapt to technological changes.

The third group, the "useless class," could be at the heart of the social crisis of the 21st century, as historian Yuval Harari has warned. They are not incompetent, but they have been abandoned by technological advances and have not been able to find a foothold in an AI-led economy. Workers in the Rust Belt are just an early microcosm of this trend, and hundreds of millions of workers around the world could face the same fate.

This differentiation not only threatens individual livelihoods but also undermines social stability. The surge in unemployment rates may lead to an increase in crime rates, a rise in populism, and even trigger regional conflicts. Addressing this issue requires a completely new distribution mechanism that transcends the traditional welfare system and enters the era of Universal Basic Income (UBI).

UBI - The Gospel of God in the AI Era

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an unconditional income保障制度: regardless of wealth, profession, or background, everyone receives a regular payment sufficient to sustain a basic standard of living. The core idea of UBI is "As a human being, one has the right to a happy life," and it aims to provide a buffer for the social fractures of the AI era.

The surge in productivity driven by AI will lead to a concentration of wealth. Tech giants and AI developers will capture most of the dividends, while the displaced workforce will be in distress. Traditional re-employment training or welfare assistance is struggling to cope with the scale of this impact:

• Limitations of re-employment training: The speed at which AI replaces jobs far exceeds human learning ability, and the demand for high-skill positions is limited.
• Inefficiency of the welfare system: Bureaucratic allocation processes and high management costs undermine the effectiveness of traditional welfare.

UBI addresses the issue in a simple and direct manner. According to data from the World Bank, the global extreme poverty line is set at $2.15 per day. If each person is provided with a monthly UBI of $100, the global annual expenditure would be approximately $9 trillion, which is equivalent to 10% of the global GDP. Although this seems substantial, in the context of AI enhancing productivity, this cost is not unmanageable.

UBI not only ensures survival needs but also grants humanity greater freedom:

• Unleashing creativity: Individuals freed from the pressures of survival can pursue education, art, or entrepreneurship. For example, Finland's UBI experiment in 2017 showed that participants experienced reduced anxiety and increased willingness to start businesses.
• Stable Society: UBI reduces conflicts caused by poverty and alleviates the psychological impact of technological unemployment.
• Redefining Labor: In the era of AI, labor is no longer the only means of survival; humans can explore more meaningful activities, such as community building or public welfare projects.

However, there are two major challenges to the implementation of UBI: funding sources and distribution mechanisms. Traditional tax and banking systems are globally inefficient and vulnerable to political interference. And the advent of cryptocurrencies has provided UBI with an unprecedented solution.

Crypto Assets — The Path to Redemption Lies Within

Crypto Assets, with their characteristics of Decentralization, borderless nature, and efficiency, are the best tools for achieving UBI. Compared to traditional financial systems, Crypto Assets are highly compatible with UBI in terms of technical architecture and philosophy.

The unique advantages of Crypto Assets

• Borderlessness: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other Crypto Assets are not limited by national borders and can directly reach individuals in any corner of the globe. In contrast, bank account coverage is less than 50% in many developing countries.
• Low cost: The cost of transferring cryptocurrency is much lower than that of cross-border bank transfers. For example, Solana's transaction fees can be as low as $0.0001, while traditional bank cross-border transfers can be as high as $10.
• Transparency: The public ledger of blockchain ensures transparent allocation of funds, reducing corruption and the erosion of intermediaries.
• Flexibility: Smart contracts (such as ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum) can automate UBI distribution. For example, setting a fixed amount of tokens to be sent to a specific wallet address each month without manual intervention.
• Energy efficiency: Although Bitcoin's PoW mechanism is more energy-intensive, Ethereum's PoS transformation and emerging Layer 2 solutions (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism) have significantly reduced energy consumption compared to traditional banks' data centers.

True Mass Adoption

Looking back, Crypto Assets have undergone a transformation from the margins to the mainstream since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009. However, its mass adoption still faces obstacles: performance constraints, regulatory uncertainty, and the technical barriers for ordinary users. In contrast, UBI may be the key direction to drive Crypto Assets into the lives of billions of users, with its influence far surpassing that of RWA or payment applications.

The limitation of RWA is that while putting assets such as real estate and artworks on the chain can enhance liquidity, it primarily serves high-net-worth individuals and is difficult to benefit ordinary users. The global RWA market size is expected to reach 10 trillion dollars by 2030, but its social impact is far less than the inclusiveness of UBI.

The bottleneck of Payfi lies in the application of Crypto Assets in the payment field (such as BitPay, Lightning Network) being limited by the popularity of fiat currency and regulatory barriers. For example, Visa processes 65,000 transactions per second, whereas the Bitcoin mainnet only processes 7 transactions, making it difficult to replace traditional payment systems.

UBI would be much larger than that, assuming a global UBI project issues $10 worth of tokens to 1 billion users every month, with an annual transaction volume of $120 billion, which is comparable to Visa's transaction size. This effect of scale will propel cryptocurrencies from speculative instruments to day-to-day economic infrastructure.

To enable Crypto Assets to drive UBI and achieve large-scale adoption, two major technological hurdles must be overcome: the comprehensive application of AI and breakthroughs in blockchain performance. These two processes may take 10 years, with preliminary results potentially forming by 2035.

1. AI Technology Explosion (Expected in 10 Years)

AI replacing most jobs requires the following conditions:

• Algorithm maturity: General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) or models close to AGI will emerge between 2030-2035, covering more complex tasks.
• Infrastructure Popularization: The decreasing costs of 5G, edge computing, and robotic hardware will push AI globally.
• Social acceptance: As the public adapts to an AI-led economy, policymakers are exploring responses such as UBI.

According to Gartner's forecast, by 2030, AI will replace 30% of existing jobs worldwide, releasing enough wealth to support UBI. At that time, the demand for UBI in society will reach its peak.

2. Blockchain Performance Breakthrough (Expected in 10 Years)

The current performance of blockchain has yet to reach a scale of 1 billion users. For example:

• Ethereum processes about 15 transactions per second, and Layer 2 can be boosted to 2,000.
• Solana claims to handle 65,000 transactions per second, but its actual throughput is limited by network stability.

To support UBI, blockchain needs to further break through the balance of the "impossible triangle" (Decentralization, security, scalability).

If UBI dances with Crypto Assets, then Crypto Assets will be God's gift to humanity in the AI era, and Satoshi Nakamoto will be the incarnation of Jesus.

Reference:

The New York Times. (2024). Trump's Tariff Plans and the Rust Belt.

Note: Discuss the impact of Trump's tariff policy on the Rust Belt.

Brookings Institution. (2020). The Decline of the Rust Belt.

Note: Analyze the reasons for the economic recession in the Rust Belt.

McKinsey Global Institute. (2023). Generative AI and the Future of Work.

Note: Predicting the contribution of AI to global GDP.

International Transport Forum. (2017). Managing the Transition to Driverless Road Freight Transport.

Note: Estimate the impact of autonomous driving on driver positions.

International Labour Organization. (2021). The Future of Work in the Context of Automation.

Note: The impact of automated forecasting on manufacturing jobs.

Nature. (2020). AI-based cancer detection by Google DeepMind.

Note: Performance data of DeepMind in cancer diagnosis.

Harari, Y. N. (2016). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

Note: The concept of "useless people" was introduced.

World Bank. (2023). Poverty Overview.

Note: Provides global poverty line data.

Kela. (2020). Finland's Basic Income Experiment.

Note: Results of the Finland UBI experiment.

World Bank. (2021). Global Findex Database.

Note: Global bank account coverage data.

Boston Consulting Group. (2022). The Future of Tokenization.

Note: Forecasting the RWA market size.

Visa. (2024). Visa Direct Fact Sheet.

Note: Visa transaction processing speed data.

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. (2023). 3rd Global Crypto Assets Benchmarking Study.

Note: Global Crypto Assets user data.

Gartner. (2023). Future of Work Trends.

Note: AI's impact on employment predictions.