So my feed is a mess.
One minute I’m reading about a crypto token named after something called Plasma that rocketed 100% and then face-planted 33% because, you know, “profit-taking.” The next, I’m looking at these jaw-dropping photos from Wyoming of a real, actual ribbon of super-heated plasma in the sky called a STEVE that looked like a “searchlight coming out of the mountains.” Then, I scroll a little further and see an article about scientists firing plasma twenty times stronger than lightning into liquid metal to try and solve fusion energy.
Plasma, plasma, plasma.
What is plasma? Apparently, it’s everything. It’s a get-rich-quick scheme for crypto whales, a ghostly atmospheric phenomenon that scientists barely understand, and humanity’s last best hope for clean energy. It’s all the same word. And I think that’s the entire problem right there.
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Another Week, Another 'World-Changing' Crypto Casino
The Digital Casino's New Chip
Let’s start with the one that’s making me tired. Plasma, the crypto project. Ticker: XPL. It launched on September 25th. Within three days, it was at an all-time high. Whales—the crypto world’s term for people with enough money to move markets—were apparently buying in by the millions. One guy supposedly made $80 million in unrealized profit. Good for him.
And offcourse, because this is 2025, the main network immediately spawned a meme coin. It’s called “Trillions.” It’s based on a clip of some tech bro saying stablecoins could create “trillions of dollars of demand.” The coin hit a $60 million market cap before, you guessed it, crashing back down to earth.
The whole thing is a perfect storm of crypto nonsense. You have the initial hype, the airdrop to “assure broad and aligned ownership” (my translation: get a bunch of people to pump your bags for you), the inevitable dump as insiders cash out, and the degen sideshow of meme coins. It's just another crypto casino. No, that’s not fair—it’s a casino that thinks it’s changing the world by offering… zero-fee USDT transfers. Groundbreaking.
Trader Altcoin Sherpa said he took a loss but is still holding, cautioning that “catching falling knives” is risky. You think? Meanwhile, the project itself declined to comment on the meme coins because it “does not endorse” them. Right. You just built the playground and have no opinion on the kids setting the swings on fire.
Give me a break.
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From Cosmic Wonder to a Grimy Transaction
Meanwhile, in the Real World…
Then you have what happened in Wyoming. Andrea Cook, a regular person, steps outside her house and sees an “unholy bright” streak of light. Gary Anderson, shooting photos by a reservoir, said it looked like a “tornado, twisting in the sky.”
They were seeing a STEVE. Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. It’s a real thing. A narrow, blindingly bright ribbon of plasma, 5,430 degrees hot, hanging 280 miles up in the atmosphere. It only shows up during intense auroras, but it isn’t an aurora. Scientists are still trying to figure out the connection. It’s a genuine mystery of the natural world.
People were scrambling to get pictures of it before it vanished. Some saw it for a few minutes, others were lucky and got 30. They weren’t trying to flip it for a profit or time the market bottom. They were just standing in the cold, staring up at the sky, completely awestruck by a ribbon of actual, physical plasma.
It’s beautiful, it’s rare, and it asks nothing of us except to look up. It ain't about market caps or getting in early. It’s just… there. A real phenomenon that reminds you how little we actually know about the world we’re living on.
And don't even get me started on the other plasma. The one you see advertised on billboards. Every time I drive past a `CSL Plasma` or `Biolife Plasma` center, I see the signs: `Donate plasma`, get cash. At least that transaction is honest. You give them your `blood plasma`, they give you fifty bucks. It's a clean trade. Not like this crypto shell game where the `plasma function` is to separate you from your savings.
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From Fusion Power to Digital Garbage
And Then There's the Sci-Fi Stuff
Just to make the headache complete, there’s a third plasma in the news. Zap Energy is running a fusion test platform called Century. They’re shooting pulses of plasma carrying 500,000 amps of current—stronger than lightning—into a chamber lined with flowing liquid bismuth. They’re doing it every five seconds for hours at a time.
This is the hard stuff. The serious, world-changing science that has been “just around the corner” for my entire life. They’re trying to build a star in a box, and all I can think about is…
They’re calling this plasma, too.
So on one screen, you have traders gambling on a digital token named Plasma. On another, you have photographers capturing a beautiful, mysterious plasma ribbon in the sky. And on a third, you have engineers building a machine that uses contained plasma to potentially power the future.
It all just blurs together into noise. The profound, the profane, and the profitable all mashed up under one stupid, overused word. Maybe I’m just old and cynical. Maybe this is just how information works now, a firehose of context-free data where a meme coin and a fusion reactor are given the same weight. But it feels like we’re losing the plot. We’re so busy chasing the next pump that we can’t even appreciate a real-life celestial event or the slow, grinding work of actual progress.
Are we supposed to be excited about a new blockchain, or a new discovery in astrophysics, or a breakthrough in clean energy? The answer is yes, and I’m too exhausted to care about any of it.
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Honestly, what a mess. We have one group of people looking up at the sky in genuine wonder at something beautiful and mysterious. We have another group of people doing the brutally hard work of trying to build a cleaner future for all of us. And then we have the crypto crowd, who took the same word and slapped it on a digital slot machine so they could gamble on meme coins named after corporate buzzwords. It’s like putting a Monet in a Chuck E. Cheese. It just feels wrong.
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