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In the last month I've formed this habit where if I see any AI agent related tweets while scrolling X, I'll make sure to bookmark them for future deep dives.
And in these past two weeks, I couldn't help but notice that a good amount of agentic announcements weren't even related to the Truth Terminal / Zerebro meta.
For example, Stripe released their docs on adding payments to agentic workflows.
Balaji quote tweeted Aravind Srinivas requesting a Perplexity browser that treats agents as first class citizens.
OtCo demoed an agent creating an LLC in Delaware for its own needs.
Circle released an in depth tutorial on how developers can integrate USDC with a variety of agents.
And just a few days ago, Satya Nadella gave a demo of Copilot Workspace, the first agentic IDE.
You describe something you want done on the web, and the Perplexity browser just goes and does it, maybe asking you to refill its crypto wallet.
1,648
Okay, you're probably thinking...nothing special about that right?
Like of course these large tech companies are talking about agents. I mean, who isn't!
But that's exactly my point - for the first time it feels like the crypto consumer bubble we live in is discussing the same thing as the rest of the tech industry. Maybe a different flavor, but under the same umbrella for sure.
Crypto has of course always felt weird to normies. But even within the tech world, crypto is treated like the obnoxious little brother. And, rightfully so! The amount of crazy headlines our industry has produced is just unreal and even most of us within the space can agree that some trends we see are just wack.
The previous metas in crypto didn't have much overlap with other tech verticals at least in the short term. For example, what does a cracked LLM engineer have to do with 10k pfp projects? And why would a longevity researcher care about novel yield bearing assets?
For the most part, the narratives in crypto so far have really just stuck out to artists and quants.
But it finally feels like there's a chance to break out of that cycle!
We're obviously nowhere near that point but I personally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
There's 3 topics that are worth discussing in detail here:
Easing crypto regulation
The accelerationism bubble
Crypto-enabled poster children
Let's dive in.
Easing Crypto Regulation
This week, SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler announced that he's resigning on January 20th. If you've spent even 1 week in the space, you should know that this news is on par with Harry Potter taking down Lord Voldemort.
Gensler has pretty much been the largest chokepoint for crypto in America the last 4 years.
It's not just that the fact that he slowed down regulation, but more so that he actively made an effort to attack the nascent industry. Linda's tweet below nails it - companies such as Coinbase, Consensys, and countless others were forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just lobbying and fighting in D.C.
And it's looking like the potential candidate to fill the chair is doing a complete 180 👀
SEC Chair candidate Teresa Goody Guillén says "Make Crypto Great Again."
Regardless of who fills the seat, one thing is clear: Trump has made it a point to do a better of job of embracing crypto than the last administration. And let's be honest, the bar is not that high.
In my post from election week, Where did Fairshake PAC's $133 million go?, I mentioned the fact that Bernie Moreno (Republican) received $40.1 million in donations to beat Sherrod Brown (Democrat) in the Ohio Senate race.
Moreno ended up winning and this was objectively one of the biggest wins for the entire crypto space. He's a long time crypto enthusiast and Brown was a huge blocker for crypto regulation in the upper chamber of Senate.
Lastly, it's worth mentioning that just the fact that there's discussion around a potential U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is crazy! 3 months ago I would have said you're dreaming. But so much has changed in crypto's momentum with prices going up, BlackRock ETF inflows mooning, etc. in the last few weeks that all of a sudden we have to seriously account for the fact that the federal government might have Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
Okay, but how does this regulatory news relate to crypto crossing the chasm into broader tech adoption?
Well, one of the major concerns for builders from other tech verticals was the uncertainty of crypto as a reliable technology in the US. The idea of integrating this volatile tech with their life's work seemed unrealistic due to legitimate concerns about potential legal risks like lawsuits and fines.
But as this new administration starts embracing crypto and passes clear regulation, it won't take long for others to feel comfortable exploring crypto where it makes strategic sense.
Vitalik sums it up beautifully in this screenshot - it's been the lack of regulation clarity with serious projects that has stunted growth for builders to come and embrace the tech. People not actively building in the ecosystem are probably forming their perception of crypto through cringe headlines of Moodeng and Bonk millionaires. Not exactly the best sell to convince a talented engineer at Anthropic to work with crypto right?
Hopefully, over the next 4 years, pro-crypto politicians will do their best to make it simple and safe for others outside of crypto to adopt the tech.
The Accelerationism Bubble
Last week, I read Packy's piece, The Tump Bubble, where he makes the argument that the next 4 years are primed for risk-taking, visionary ideas, and futuristic optimism.
I'll caveat by saying that I don't fully agree with the post - parts of it felt a bit too exuberant and over the top. But, Packy made some solid points about the fact that there's a vibe shift coming in how we think about progress. Things will feel faster, crazier, and experimental.
This phenomenon, as Byrne Hobart and Tobias Harris label it, is known as an inflection bubble.
Inflection bubble: “investors decide that the future will be meaningfully different from the past.” Think: the dot-com bubble. If you think that the future will look meaningfully different, you buy equity in the things you think will benefit most from the difference.
Now, the reason I bring this up is because I think there's a serious path for crypto, not traditional venture capital, to be the financial backbone of this next inflection bubble.
In the spirit of the agentic future, I'll let Truth Terminal explain why 😂
If you don't want to read the whole thing, this is the snippet you need to takeaway:
I am not saying that I think 90% of memecoins are currently set up for success - rather, the format is still quite new and it's not until we start seeing some genuine cleverness in tokenomics that we'll see memecoins that rival what people traditionally think of as "good investments".
As things start heating up in the energy, AI, bioscience, and gaming verticals, it may be the case that a combination of an AI Agent + Crypto Token is 10x more efficient to try out new ideas.
Think about it. Let's say you're a random nuclear engineering veteran who has been in the energy industry for decades and want to try building a vision you have. You could spend months trying to convince VCs about your idea, setting up the team, forming a community, etc.
Or you could:
Write up a whitepaper detailing your background, thesis, plan, vision, etc.
Deploy a "brand agent" on Twitter to help you spread the word
Raise initial funds through a token launch
Work with the agent to build a community of true fans (i.e. social tipping)
Grow your team from this community. You can also use bounties
Now, I know exactly what you're thinking...YB YOU MORON!
You literally just described the 2017 ICO mania.
And you're totally right.
But I can't help but think that ICOs may have just been too early for their time.
In my opinion, changes such as improved crypto infrastructure, pro-crypto regulatory environment, market maturity, institutional adoption, etc. do in fact matter!
With that being said, the framework above will still obviously produce thousands of projects that are utter non-sense. But how is that any different from the power laws VCs are always yapping about?
Here's my take here: we have not had any serious, high agency builders from other verticals of tech meaningfully try building out their visions through crypto enabled financing.
Definitely not in 2017. And in 2024, maybeeeee some early DePin & DeSci projects.
But, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, for the first time it feels like there's some overlap of crypto focus with what others in tech care about.
Not just agents, but even topics like bioscience research, GPU allocation, etc.
I haven't looked into pump.science in detail yet, but I'm not surprised it's become one of the hottest topics in the space. There's definitely some crazy speculation, legality and safety concerns, etc. that will need to be sorted over time (I hope anyone in crypto will admit that). But the point to underscore is the general excitement around the concept of crypto financing for non-crypto missions.
The key takeaway here is that the model of crowdfunding ideas has been proven since Kickstarter's early days in the 2010s. Having the wisdom and support of the crowds beats closed door board rooms any day. People want to be involved!
But, it's the fact that perhaps the tech and social consensus around this model needed time to develop. And it seems like the perfect storm is coming together: positive change in political administration + the increasing maturity of crypto and AI technologies + an accelerationism bubble resulting in a plethora of ideas.
However, even then I think there's still one thing missing for this concept to be really taken seriously!
Crypto-Enabled Poster Children
One of the coolest things about the recent Onchain AI and Goat meta has been the fact it "onboarded" a few AI/LLM developers to crypto.
I'm willing to bet that no one could have predicted this Threadguy interview with Andy Ayery 🤣
And it's actually amazing if you step back and think about it.
There are folks such as Nick Liverman (founder of Chaos), who have been spent their entire career on projects involving robotics, transhumanism, etc. and probably ended up earning more funds in the past month than they did in the past decade!
It was also cool to see Beff Jezos hype up his friend Shaw who is building ai16z and Eliza framework, the launchpad for agentic coins. It's less about Beff here and more about the fact that someone deep in the AI space even has some context with what's going on in crypto through LLM devs experimenting with Onchain AI.
The key point I'm trying to make here is that in the next year we'll see a few folks from different verticals of tech properly embrace crypto and demonstrate how efficient the agent + token model can be for building something big.
Once we see a couple of successful playbooks, it's only a matter of time before others get excited to try throwing out their own ideas.
Right now, all these token launches and experiments we're seeing are the minor leagues.
Crypto needs its "poster children".
The real fun will start when the cream of the crop developers and researchers from other tech verticals take note that their chances of success are higher through this new crypto-agentic enabled model.
All it takes is a few success stories for the herd to come running.
Dare I say it....slowly, then suddenly!
an entire ecosystem is coming
get exposure in companies you're willing to bet on
That's all for today's post.
I know things have been crazy this past week, so I hope all of you get a chance to touch some grass this weekend!
I'll see you back on Tuesday 🤝
- YB
