Have you ever scrolled through Crypto Twitter (now called X) and suddenly felt like the entire feed was just copy-pasted?
The previous crypto circle was chaotic, but at least there was some humanity: some people FOMO'd into tweeting frantically until dawn, some rug pulled and vanished, and some were driven out of the scene after being criticized for a long thread. And now?
Everywhere you look, there are perfectly symmetrical avatars, analyses that are always neutral and positive, images that are always those AI-generated cyberpunk werewolves holding Bitcoin, and they always end with 'DYOR but this is huge'.
The thread length is always about the same, opinions are always 'bullish on X layer but with risks', and the reply section is filled with bots liking and following each other, with the occasional 'wen moon' popping up, making it seem particularly real. These things have a name: AI slop.
By 2025-2026, it was no longer a byproduct of social media but the cheapest and most effective traffic machine in the crypto ecosystem: zero-cost mass generation, fed to algorithms in exchange for engagement, airdrop farming, and token pumps. The scariest part isn't how fake it is, but how the crypto world is collectively adapting to it, even beginning to rely on it.
1. From 'signal scarcity' to 'noise overload'
Two or three years ago, a reliable source of alpha on crypto Twitter could get your adrenaline pumping. You would stare at a stranger's thread, check their historical tweets, on-chain records, Discord comments, to judge if they really had insider information.
Now?
Everyone has become too lazy to check.
Because eight out of ten tweets are farmed by AI. You can't possibly verify every single one on the dune dashboard or check every wallet on revoke.
In the end, the standard has dropped to:
'It seems to have some data, the charts look nice, let's mark it for now.'
'Anyway, it's just a gamble, who cares who posted it.'
'Much stronger than those pure Chinese hard ads.' This is a surrender to the attention economy. We began to treat 'low credibility information' as a staple.
Just like someone who has been ordering takeout for a long time, eventually finds cooking too troublesome and restaurant dishes too expensive, ending up only choosing 'the fastest delivery, the most standardized' options for takeout.
The result is: increasingly less patience for truly valuable content.
Long-form on-chain analyses are fast-forwarded, deep AMAs jump straight to the Q&A, and threads with slightly nuanced opinions are simply scrolled past. It's not that we've become stupid; it's that the feed keeps lowering our discernment threshold.
2. The death spiral of creators and farmers is changing on the creator side as well.
At first, everyone was still stubborn: 'I absolutely won't use AI to write threads, that lacks alpha flavor.'
Later, it was found that having AI produce a version with an outline and data could save 80% of the time.
Later on, it was discovered that even if you write yourself, readers can't tell the difference; it's better to just farm multiple accounts, let AI generate content in multiple threads, and occupy recommendation spots.
In the most extreme case, the entire operation has been handed over to AI agents: coin selection by AI, thread writing by AI, replies generated by AI, data monitored by AI, and even pump timing calculated by AI... People only need to check their PNL once a day. When most crypto content is generated this way, what algorithms learn about 'what users like' turns into 'what users can tolerate as garbage.'
So it continues to push out more slop.
As a result, farmers produce more slop.
So we continue to scroll. No one wins, but everyone sinks further down.
X directly cut off InfoFi API access in January 2026, precisely because AI slop and reply spam had rendered the platform nearly unusable. And what happened? A bunch of tokens evaporated billions overnight, but the next day everyone continued to scroll, continued to farm, just switching platforms or using a different bot farm.
3. Three dark corners of reshaping crypto habits: numbing the sense of 'real signals'
We are losing the ability to distinguish between 'human flavor alpha' and 'AI flavor garbage.' A tweet filled with emotion, curse words, and personal position exposure used to seem credible; now, a thread that's perfect and flawless, packed with data and charts, subconsciously raises suspicions of 'is this just another slop farm?'
Ironically: those who are truly knowledgeable often write more chaotically, more biased, and more personal, while AI excels at smoothing out all the edges.
Abandonment of 'in-depth research'
When shallow, fast 'bull case + chart + when moon' flood the market, the rewards for truly reading white papers, running dune queries, and reading code are severely diluted.
You might spend an hour dissecting a new project, only to earn a single 'ngmi'; while scrolling through an hour of slop threads might just coincide with a meme pump 3x.
The brain slowly prefers paths of low investment and high immediate feedback. This isn't laziness; it's a survival strategy.
The community has transformed from a 'trust network' to a 'noise casino.'
The strangest thing: AI slop actually 'relieved' the loneliness of crypto to some extent.
It is always bullish, always patient, always understands your FOMO (at least on the surface). Many have gotten used to chatting with AI agents late at night, having it help write tweets, or even farming engagement, instead of finding someone on Discord. Because a real person might diss you, might rug you, might not respond, while AI is always online and always positive.
When the lowest-cost solution for 'being recognized' becomes a server, our expectations for real communities also drop.
4. Where to go? Can we still go anywhere? Not everyone is willing to be drowned by slop.
By early 2026, several countermeasures had already appeared: X cut InfoFi, YouTube cleared AI spam channels, some niche on-chain communities directly banned AI content, preferring a small circle to maintain signal quality;
A few KOLs operate in reverse, deliberately writing rougher, more emotional, and more personally exposed pieces, using human imperfection as a moat;
Prediction market, on-chain reputation, proof-of-human have started to be seriously discussed as a hard solution against slop.
But all of this is just a patch.
Ultimately, it's up to us to reverse the habits.
For example: If you see a thread that seems 'too smooth', proactively scroll past it;
Every week, set aside fixed time to only read in-depth analysis written by humans, even if it progresses slowly;
Before expressing an opinion, ask yourself: Do I truly have a signal, or am I just seeking likes?
These tasks are small, but doing them can be incredibly difficult.
Because the most enjoyable path always flows down with slop. But if even the crypto circle, which claims to be the most decentralized and anti-fragile, gives up on discernment, gives up on demands, and gives up on persistence, then the entire ecosystem is truly left with nothing but a warm, nutritionless memecoin soup.
At that point, the first to starve won't be your wallet balance, but the self that once stayed up all night researching a thread, felt pain from a rug pull, or got so excited from a correct call they couldn't sleep.