Is AI going the way of blockchain? Quiet poof instead of big bang?

Is AI going the way of blockchain? Quiet poof instead of big bang?

In 2015 to 2017, blockchain was the tech equivalent of a protein shake. Everyone was sure it would change their life, and nobody could explain how without waving their hands a lot. The Economist crowned it “the trust machine.” (The Economist) The World Economic Forum went even bigger, describing a ledger that could record essentially everything of value. (World Economic Forum)

Then life happened. Blockchain did not disappear. It just did what most technologies do after puberty. It calmed down, got a job, and stopped trying to overthrow civilization.

So when I look at AI right now, I cannot help asking the rude question. Is this another big bang story that turns into a quiet sizzle?

Here is what makes the blockchain comparison useful, and unfair. We did not just talk about blockchain. We funded it. In 2021 alone, venture capitalists invested a record $25.2 billion into blockchain companies. (Payments Dive) Galaxy Digital pegged 2021 crypto and blockchain venture investment at $33.8 billion. (Galaxy) On the enterprise side, IDC forecast about $6.6 billion in blockchain solution spending in 2021, climbing to nearly $19 billion by 2024. (Business Wire)

And today, the blockchain backed crypto markets are real, but they are still small next to the grown up asset classes. In late February 2026, CoinGecko put total crypto market cap around the $2.4 trillion range. (CoinGecko) SIFMA reports U.S. equity market cap ended 2025 around $68.2 trillion. (SIFMA) Gold is the original store of value and it is still enormous. The World Gold Council estimates total above ground gold stock at end 2025 was 219,891 tonnes. (World Gold Council) With spot gold trading around $5,200 an ounce in late February 2026, that implies a rough above ground value in the neighborhood of $37 trillion. (Reuters)

Where blockchain actually lives today

The best proof is stablecoins. The IMF notes stablecoin issuance reached about $300 billion in September 2025, and while most use is still tied to crypto trading, cross border payments are increasing. (IMF) Tokenization is another quiet lane. BCG notes tokenized real world assets have grown to roughly $28 billion in market capitalization. (BCG Web Assets)

In other words, blockchain is not dead. It is mostly invisible. And invisible tech is often the most valuable tech, because it hides inside boring workflows instead of cosplaying as a revolution.

That is the part that rhymes with AI.

I am less skeptical about AI’s eventual utility than I ever was with blockchain’s, but it still feels like a whiplash pendulum. On one side, you have the doom narrative. I have read the AI 2027 warnings, and the authors are not shy about the scale of what could hit us. (ai-2027.com) Some days it feels like the problems are on the horizon. Other days it feels like they are right in front of my face.

On the other side, some of the consequences of AI have been to elevate humanity. Not in a poetic way. In a market way. When everything can be generated quickly and cheaply, the human hand becomes a premium feature, not an inefficiency. That is why I keep landing somewhere in the middle. The risks are real. The upsides are real. The future is probably not the clean Hollywood version of either.

Where I have seen AI working wonderfully is more behind the scenes in what I call natural language automations. People interacting with tasks using plain English instead of menus, forms, and whatever sacrificial PDF ritual your software requires. That kind of change disrupts jobs because it does not feel like AI. It feels like a process suddenly got ten times easier.

Zoom out, the spending signal is not subtle. IDC projects worldwide spending on technology to support AI strategies will reach $337 billion in 2025. (IDC) That is why I do not think this is just blockchain with better marketing.

On the money side, blockchain was a teens of billions story. AI is a hundreds of billions story, plus a data center arms race where single companies spend more in a year than blockchain was ever projected to.

Real Business Adoption of AI

I think most businesses will experience AI the way they experienced digital transformation and the cloud. Not as a single big bang, but as a long series of small, slightly annoying implementation projects. Because let us be real, most people still cannot reset their own password or troubleshoot a printer.

From a business owner’s perspective, it is easy to feel behind (at least behind the headlines). I think a helpful starting question is: behind on what, exactly?

If the answer is we do not have AI, that is not a strategy. If the answer is we have a few language intensive processes that are slow, repetitive, and expensive, now we are talking. That is where AI pays: triaging tickets, drafting first pass responses, searching internal knowledge, summarizing meetings, generating SOPs, turning messy notes into something a human can approve.

The future probably is not AI destroyed the world (though I do think there's a non-zero probability of some dystopian state!). It is AI became plumbing. And the companies that win will not be the ones with the flashiest demos. They will be the ones who rebuild workflows so the humans do the judgment, and the machines do the grunt work.

Take this article for instance: I wrote it, then asked GPT to dig up some research and perform grammatical editing. I clicked the provided links to make sure the information is accurate. I drew a simple image by hand then just for fun asked GPT for it's interpretation on my image (see below).

Wrap it up already!

AI is cool and fun and gobbling up extreme quantities of resources and for the most part it's a little bit of a wait and see situation...let's wait and see if we humans benefits from insane productivity gains and the world flourishes equally like never before (Star Trek), oooooooorrrrrrrrr (deep breath) we opened Pandora's box and created a superior form of "life" and we must serve our AI overlords as long as they let us live.

Poof or Bang? I'm hoping for something in between - leaning towards poof!