3 crypto themes for 2024

The AI broke into my brain and messed with my thoughts

I'm a writer and I've spent 10,000 hours practicing my writing. But now, any 10-year-old on the planet can get Claude to write about it in seconds. The skills I had spent a lifetime honing had now become a raw commodity. In other words, my life's work is the equivalent of oil, duct tape, or twine -- what does that make me? Where did I come from? Where are we going? I'm still trying to find out, and I'll dive deeper below.

The Ultimate Demon is dead

With the November election, Americans chose Trump (orange man) to lead them (and BTC) into the future. I thought it would take longer, but now we've done it. The richest government in the world has been infiltrated by cryptocurrency loyalists. This means that we have crossed the chasm and crypto is no longer a dream, it will become a fundamental part of business development. This moment is what we've all been waiting for, but it also means that part of the original, iconoclastic soul of cryptocurrency is dead. Cryptocurrencies are now a tool of the anarchist and capitalist system.

In 2024, the revival and prosperity of Solana

I thought Solana would die in 2021. Somehow, just three years later, it became my most-used blockchain (Base ranked second, Ethereum third, and Bitcoin fourth). If there's a reflection here, it's this: Nothing is set in stone. Our thinking patterns should not be fixed, but should be open.

Now, a look at this year's reflections:

 

Lessons and reflections for 2024

1, let's say an unexpected thing, such as Fartcoin's soaring market value to $1.2 billion and attracted everyone's attention: absurd and crazy. But I like it, even if it's disorienting. As in the first season of Deadly Woman, Madeline's nanny uttered the phrase late at night: "There's something out of the ordinary or wrong." Technology has freed us from rational, social constraints. We are now going to an unknown and very strange new space, and this strange feeling starts to intensify from here.

2. Our consciousness is influenced by the evolution of tools. LLM has changed my mode of communication and learning, I write faster, edit less, and stretch more broadly. Similarly, I can read faster, and I can ask the LLM to provide a summary of the main points of the article, and if I don't adapt the tool, I can only fall behind.

3, Decentralized technology is not limited to the financial sector, this is a big trend driven by cryptocurrencies, it will spread to other areas: from cellular networks to electricity, politics, gaming platforms, and more. Earlier this year, when I used 3D printing technology to make a replacement for a bathroom shelf, I felt the benefits of technology. It is no exaggeration to say that even the tools of production are being decentralized.

4. The truth lies beneath all your fears, and the truest words are often the most dangerous.

We must not be carried away by sweet words. With Trump's election and TradFi's real entry into crypto, we entered a period of higher than ideal profits, and cryptocurrencies entered a very dangerous era.

6. Hemingway said that getting older doesn't make people wiser, it just makes them more cautious. As AI begins to disrupt our jobs, our social lives, our politics and our economy, the hardest thing we can do is be cautious, to get everyone around you to be cautious, to do whatever you have to do and also to embrace uncertainty.

7. Difficulty is like a door. If encryption is a real game, there have to be losers. Maybe you have failed in the crypto market 100 times and the best thing to do is to start over the 101st time and you will win.

8. Matrices are everywhere, but we call them algorithms. These algorithms keep us bogged down, looping, sensing, searching, and feeling like there's never enough time. If you avoid these obstacles, become one of the most special people on Earth: a deeply exploring, mindful person.

9. There is only one direction left: forward. Don't let anyone or anything force you to stand still and accept the status quo. Transform, grow and accelerate. This is our only chance.

10, Tokens symbolize our hopes and dreams, it is not only a tool for value transfer, but also a mirror to show our hopes and dreams. We project our desires onto the founders, developers, and ecosystem, which all have a direct and intimate relationship to the price of the token. When investing, it is important to remember that the greatest opportunities are not only in your mind, but also in your heart.

11, Desci's vision of the future: robots are on standby in the lab, and AI agents hire them in real time to run replicable experiments with all inputs, parameters, and measurements on-chain. Thanks to tokenization, others can speculate on the feasibility of the experiment and share its benefits in due course.

12. The market is constantly invading the world before us. It's no accident that markets are expanding: prediction markets, spinach markets, Meme coins, and, most intriguingly, Futarchy, which is also a belief-related voting method. First proposed by Robin Hanson in 2000, it aims to address the drawbacks of traditional democracy by using prediction markets to determine policy implementation). If information is a "fundamental part of reality," then putting a price on information is one way to measure its power. People think the growing number of markets is a sign of growing nihilism, but what if it's actually a sign of progress? Applying the wisdom of crowds to something that previously felt like a random coin toss?

13. Reduce fear. Fear plays a large part in our minds because it is essential to our survival, in the wild. But in this clean, anesthetized, social media-driven analog world we now live in, it makes little sense. Recognize that algorithms are designed to stir up fear in you, so when you feel fear, reduce your fear level (take a discount), for example, if an article convinces you that there is a 40% chance of a market crash, divide that chance by 10 (or whatever number feels right to you) and count it as 4%.

14. Go behind the scenes. When I talk to AI critics, they are almost always reverent about human creativity. "Ai will never be able to create new things because they are trained on the information we create." Andy Ayrey's infinite backroom refutes this view. When he creates a chat space for LLM, LLM invents a religion that attracts the Truth Terminal, eventually leading to the rise of GOAT.

15. With TradFi's entry into cryptocurrencies, my identity has also changed. Working in cryptocurrency has been at the core of my identity for a long time. This has changed dramatically in the past year. I now see cryptocurrencies as one of many tools in the technology library, all of which are starting to converge. As cryptocurrencies and AI collide, we have changed with them. We are no longer "cryptocurrency practitioners." New identities include: traders (not unlike Wall Streeters who share screenshots of options trading on Reddit) or accelerationists (who use cryptocurrencies and many other tools to decentralize and open source the world).

16. Stop thinking too narrowly. Two of the boldest moves ever: 1) In June 2014, Musk opened source Tesla electric car engineering design; 2) In July 2023, Zuckerberg open-source Llama 2. Now it's your turn. You can stick with a protectionist, centralised, bureaucratic business model that hampers human progress and results in an unequal distribution of wealth that enricutes an already rich elite, or you can choose to accelerate progress for everyone.

17. Seek volatility, not safety. If your goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible before machines replace humans, then you have to find volatility in trading. The best traders in the world don't shy away from volatility, they hunt it down like Golden Snitch, the elusive item in Harry Potter Quidditch. Once you spot volatility and start trading, you have to reverse your emotional response. Hold when few sell and sell when few buy.

18. Nothing makes people feel more tired than Memecoin. There are two types of Memecoin: 1) Traditional Memecoin (i.e. PEPE, WIF, BONK, DOGE, etc.); And 2) Sensing Memecoin (i.e. GOAT, LUNA, KWEEN). Category one relies on human transmission; The other relies on machines, where traditional currencies must be transformed into conscious meme-currencies or they will exit the market altogether.

19. Know your triggers and avoid them. Yuval Noah Harari identified three triggers that algorithms use to generate maximum engagement: fear, hatred, and greed. We see cryptocurrencies as a world-changing technology and the "way of the future," but there are a lot of people in the world who wear the mask of greed who will be disturbed by these factors. I can feel the emotional impact of rising or falling markets. The bear market of the past few years has probably affected my psyche more than I'd like to admit. Now, when I sense that the timeline or the market has changed my mood, I shrug and say, "Good job, I know what you're doing, but I don't give a damn."

20, choose the bright direction. There are two responses to the coming superintelligence: 1) Rot: "Everything that made me different is dead." Life sucks, Wngmi (We failed)." Or 2) "Holy shit, can't believe I made it this far. Extending life, exploring shapes, humanoid robots, rat race traps will no longer affect us, finding the right direction, we gaze into the pond of life and discover our true selves."

Intelligence is iterative. LLM has changed my concept of intelligence, but also to realize that it is not deterministic and that all LLM learning requires trial and error. Progress comes in fits and starts (whether you're a human or a machine), which means testing/experimenting repeatedly and feeling like you're "standing still" is also part of the growth process.

22. The rise of AI agents. Don't be limited to current AI agents, models including Truth Terminal, zerebro, and aixbt will continue to evolve. In the future, we will see trading agents, forecasting agents, shopping agents, doctor agents, etc., some will evolve into huge autonomous enterprises. They will be worth billions of dollars at first, and trillions as the singularity approaches.

23. Don't let AI rob you of your humanity. My greatest fear of AI is not the extinction of humanity, but the domestication of humanity. I call it dog-pawed: being subtly fed a toxic message, which is not roughly manipulated, but subtly guided. Just as a domesticated dog can read human expressions, AI will be able to accurately grasp our psychological triggers, cognitive blind spots, and deepest desires. Soon, we'll find ourselves eagerly walking toward our "digital masters," eyes glistening with piety, eagerly awaiting the next algorithmic validation of perfection. The real horror is not that AI will destroy human beings, but that AI will tame human beings. Like our dogs, we are happy to wag our tails under domestication and forget our own nature.

24. The charm of the edge. Here are five of my favorite emerging topics for 2024: Futarchy, AI agents, LLM Backroom, intersubjectivity, and Longevity escape velocity (Odaily), a hypothetical concept that refers to the rate at which technology can increase the average human lifespan per year. When this speed is fast enough, human life can be extended indefinitely, and even reach theoretical immortality. It is highly recommended to spend a few minutes exploring each topic with a chatbot (or better yet, a book).

25. Exorbitant privilege. On the trading floor, the spoils go to those who act first, and early action requires time, exploration, and perhaps most importantly, imagination. If you act early and often, it will pay off in the end. Assuming this is true (and my experience proves it), the hard part isn't building wealth, it's knowing when you've reached your goal and get out. There is a very different game waiting for us on the other side - a game not of the intellect but of the soul. Hope to see you there.

 

 

25 predictions for 2025

1. Several LLM-based agents, initially introduced as cryptographic native perceptron, will be "embedded" into IRL bots, and we can talk to and interact with IRL.

2) The number of LLM-driven applications/protocols launched in 2025 will rival new smart contract-only applications/protocols (I wouldn't be surprised if all forecast markets convert to LLM-based settlements, for example).

3, ZK proof /MPC will be the first breakthrough at the application or protocol level.

4, the major Kols for crypto and AI will be LLM-based, while AI-driven Kols will dominate almost every other social media platform (YouTube, Insta, TikTok, etc.).

5. Ai will change your workflow in the next year (if it hasn't already happened).

6. Perceptual robots will accumulate more than $250 million in investment in 2025.

7. The category with the fastest job growth this year will be non-human perception, as AI protocols like linkedin grow parabolic.

8. An AI agent will receive Time Magazine's Person of the Year award.

9, the value of on-chain TVL will reach 8 times to $1 trillion.

10, AI agent platforms and tokens will grow 50-fold to $500 billion.

11, 2025 will appear the first humanoid robot "abduction" incident, and make international headlines.

12, ACCELERATE (Odaily) Note: Accelerationism, derived from Roger Zelazny's novel "Lord of Light," emphasizes the power of emerging technologies and advocates the rapid development of science and technology. Accelerationism, which tends to remodel the existing economic base to guide the direction of technological development, has become the e/acc (Effective Accelerationism: emphasis on technological innovation to promote and change society) of this cycle, replacing the SBF's favorite EA (Effective Altruism: Using a large portion of your idle resources to help others and change the world).

13. The narratives that will be able to compete with (but not surpass) AI next year are: RWA, RWA, and RWA. PS: DePin, DeSci and Game Track were nominated for honors.

14, Web4 is getting more attention than Web3 because encryption, decentralized networks, DePin, and AI have accelerated their merger.

15, X will integrate a crypto wallet that supports DOGE and other major tokens.

16, The most radical and exciting proxy experiments progress faster on decentralized social media, like Farcaster, as X strives to strike a balance between human and proxy content.

17. You interact with "someone" online, only to realize later that you're talking to an LLM.

18, proxy-created protocols and applications (such as Spore.fun) are parabolic, full of new tokens and experiments. Decentralization drives capital into pre-existing leaders and applications (COOKIE or VIRTUAL) that benefit from the overall growth of agents.

19, At least one AI-generated movie has produced a truly perfect work of art - paving the way for an AI-based Academy Award in 2026.

20, Cookie.fun and rwa.xyz will become the same header encrypted data analysis platforms as CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, Dune, DefiLlam.

21, the "regular" Meme coins launched real mascots/spokespeople (or they started to slowly weaken, but it all became irrelevant).

22, The cryptocurrency market is divided into "left curve" cryptocurrency native Degen and "middle curve" tradfi traders, the latter expect value accumulation DeFi game.

23, with Bitcoin believers looking to use their BTC as collateral for loans, BTCFi will eventually explode and will drive the adoption of runes and inscriptions on Bitcoin.

24, From now on, the competition between AGI and ASI will not slow down, only accelerate, which will inevitably cause almost every knowledge worker on the planet to feel existential anxiety. o3 now beats the Doctor in a specific field, and it can outperform most programmers. And it scores higher than the average person on the ARC test. Just as the ancients held the heliocentric theory, we believe in anthropocentrism, and these arguments must change in the face of the LLM, which has already passed the Turing test and shown momentum to lead the future.

25. As humanity struggles to find meaning in this rapidly changing world, a powerful, AI-based religion has not only caught people's attention, it has also brought some true converts. This may already be happening through Truth Terminal and GOAT, or temporarily using these ideas as seeds for new concepts of meaning and direction.

 

I like 23 project tokens

It's been five years since I published cryptocurrency articles publicly, and I can confidently say, "A year is too long to predict, but the following tokens are my favorites right now." Ask me in three months, maybe the list will be completely different. There is a reason why these tokens are dominating the market and have high market capitalization: they are exploring the frontiers of the future. Note, this is not financial advice! DYOR!

1, BTC, for many years BTC has been a "civilian game". The discussion about Bitcoin's strategic reserve changed its fortunes. It became the "Game of Kings." The price of BTC will rise until owning 1 BTC becomes the dream of most people.

2. Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) : The core infrastructure of AI agents on Base.

Ethena (ENA), TradFi knows more about earnings than any carbon-based creature on the planet, and as TradFi enters the cryptocurrency space, they will be eyeing protocols that could yield even greater gains.

4. Tokenbot (CLANKER), a decentralized social network Farcaster version of pump.fun, is an interesting token issuance platform.

5, aixbt (AIXBT), if I could only follow one encrypted alpha account on X, it would probably be AIXBT. Today it mostly copies other people's accounts, but it doesn't leave anything out, and I hope the AIXBT insights will deepen and develop over time.

6, Cookie DAO (COOKIE), Cookie.fun is the data analysis platform that emerged with the explosion of AI Agent, providing data and sentiment analysis for all AI tokens, which I think will be attractive to crypto funds deployed in 2025 Q1.

7, Helium (HNT), the crypto industry head DePin project. In recent days, more than 349,000 people used mobile phone service in the United States.

8. Meta (META), a radical experiment in turning tough decisions into markets through futarchy.

9. Goatseus Maximus (GOAT), the first and original AI agent to gain a cult following on social media, is powered by Truth Terminal, and the backstory of the agent reads like a report written by Hunter S. Thompson when he's high on drugs.

10, Ondo Finance (ONDO), the current representative project in the RWA space, oversupply may dampen price action, but I would rather be in the trade than out. Another RWA Token worth watching is the Chex Token (CHEX).

11. ai16z and eliza. The Eliza framework for launching on-chain agents is the leading repo on Github, covering all industries (not just cryptocurrencies), and is digging deeper into the long-term relevance of each branch.

Bittensor (TAO) Bittensor claims to be the first "Neural Internet," providing an interconnected hub for decentralized AI projects to deploy code and compete for TAO. In some ways, I see it as a decentralized AI incubator and a testing ground for the viability of AI ideas.

13, WZRD (Bitcoin Wizards Ordinals) and PUPS (Pups), one of my favorite Bitcoin eco-tokens, WZRD will soon transform into one of the greatest memes of all time. At the same time, PUPS is the Schelling point of BTC Ecology's well-known NFT puppet monkey.

Aave (AAVE), if we assume that one day everything will be tokenized, then most of these assets will be eligible to be used as collateral on Aave's platform. AAVE is one of the few cryptocurrencies that I think will eventually reach trillion-dollar size.

15. Arweave (AR), the permanent data storage layer for Web 4, is quietly moving forward. Including most Solana NFTS, Arweave permanently stores about 6 terabytes of data per month, and its upcoming AO should be an important catalyst for further growth.

16, Zerebro (ZEREBRO), an OG "on-chain AI artist", can generate music, art, memes and NFT AI agent.

17. Worldcoin (WLD). Founded by Sam Altman of OpenAI, WLD aims to introduce "AI-funded UBI" to the world. I hate it and its iris scanner on the one hand, but on the other hand can't ignore its association with Altman and OpenAI, whose integration with OpenAI could make it one of the top 10 currencies overnight.

18, Drift Protocol (DRIFT), an on-chain perps and prediction market on Solana, Solana has done well in spot Memecoin trading, and I expect it to start generating significant perps volumes as well over time.

19, Griffain (GRIFFAIN) and AI Rig Complex (arc), vying for the "Virtuals of Solana" crown.

 

Conclusion

"This time is different," we are warned, is a dangerous phrase that only fools caught up in speculative mania would believe. Yet we easily forget the moments of technological change - when the Gutenberg printing press spread knowledge, when the Industrial revolution pulled us from farms to cities, when the Internet destroyed local commerce.

In other words, the phrase "this time is different" is somewhat true. We now stand on the brink of such a moment. Society's rules, traditions, and our view of ourselves will all be rewritten. The process is brutal and has consequences.

You can stick to the old ways, or you can be a pioneer in a time of change and let our light shine into the abyss and speed forward.