In every domain where value is created — crypto, venture, nation-building, religion, even traditional brick-and-mortar business — two forces are always in tension:
Pragmatism (what exists today)
vs.
Story (what the future could become).
Most people pick one side too rigidly, and that’s exactly why they fail.
1. Crypto taught it first: assets = stories
Crypto is the cleanest petri dish for valuation psychology. Strip away regulation, fundamentals, and cashflow, and you’re left with the naked engine of human belief.
Tokens don’t pump because of discounted future cash flows.
They pump because enough people agree on a story about the future:
“This will be the next layer-zero.”
“This will onboard the next billion users.”
“This meme coin is the cultural currency of a generation.”
Anyone who dismisses stories entirely tends to fall into two categories:
- burnt cynics who bought the wrong stories
- highly rational people who aren’t actually very good at anticipating human behavior
Both miss the point:
markets are not pricing the present — they’re pricing the future narrative.
2. Religion figured this out long before economists
Jordan Peterson’s frame for religion, God, heaven, and hell is essentially an economic model:
stories project future value into the present.
Heaven and hell are future scenarios that shape today’s actions.
Humans have always used stories to structure time — from sunrise rituals to harvest festivals. A narrative gives meaning to the hours and days, turning routine into purpose.
Whether or not one believes it literally is irrelevant — economically, it works.
A strong story collapses future rewards into present motivation.
In markets and startups, the same dynamic applies:
- A founder’s story collapses future potential into today’s valuation.
- A token’s narrative collapses future adoption into today’s price.
- A country’s myth collapses future nationhood into today’s cohesion.
Without story, humans default to the short term.
With story, they can finally play the long game.
3. The pragmatic window: 12–24 months
Here’s where pragmatism matters.
In the first 12–24 months, reality dominates:
- Can you ship?
- Can you sell?
- Can you survive?
- Does anyone care?
This is the “Qin Shihuang and Nobunaga” zone: rapid action, force, speed, adoption of new technologies, and intense execution.
Both Qin and Nobunaga built power through aggressive pragmatism.
But they also collapsed because they had no long-term story that society could absorb.
Practical speed can win battles, but never civilizations.
Execution can get you through year 1, but not year 10.
4. When you have no leverage, story becomes the leverage
If you’re starting from zero — no capital, no status, no network — there is only one cheat code:
borrow the future.
Borrow the hype, borrow the narrative, borrow the myth, borrow someone else’s momentum.
Story is free leverage.
This is why crypto founders start narrative-first.
Why early-stage startups pitch before product.
Why countries invent national myths.
Why religions survive millennia.
Story is the only capital available at absolute zero.
5. The trap of pure pragmatists
Every ecosystem has a Koh — the hyper-pragmatic operator who refuses narratives, focuses on the next sale, optimizes the funnel, hustles endlessly.
They’re incredibly reliable.
They’re incredibly hardworking.
And they almost never break out of the $1–2M ceiling.
They become what I call blue-collar rich:
financially comfortable, but permanently grinding.
No story → no capital leverage → no scale.
Ironically, these people often look down on storytellers — but it’s the storytellers who leapfrog them.
And when pure pragmatists try to play the “big valuation” game?
They burn out within 6 months.
Because valuations are not dictated by pragmatists.
They’re dictated by story markets.
6. Brick-and-mortar businesses show the limit
Restaurants and bootstrapped local services trade on pragmatism only.
Their ceiling is predictable:
- You spend $1 on ads
- You make $3 back
- You grind
- You sell at 2–3× ARR
End of story
This is Gary Vee’s world: hustle, volume, brute force.
Solid, respectable — but capped.
No narrative = no multiple.
7. Valuation is fundamentally story-driven
Strip business down to fundamentals and you get this:
- Within 1–2 years: pragmatism wins
- Beyond 3 years: story determines everything
- At zero leverage: story is your only tool
- At scale: story becomes your moat
Google, Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, Ethereum — all valued exponentially beyond their cash flows because of one factor:
they built a story about the future that others couldn’t ignore.
That's the entire game.
Conclusion: Don’t Worship Story. Don’t Worship Pragmatism. Master Both.
The people who win in this world combine:
- short-term realism → ship, sell, survive
- long-term narrative → attract capital, talent, and believers
If you optimize for only one, you cap yourself:
- Story without pragmatism = delusion
- Pragmatism without story = treadmill
- Story + pragmatism = escape velocity
Valuation is never just numbers.
It’s numbers multiplied by narrative.
And narrative — when wielded deliberately — is the closest thing humans have to alchemy.