Crypto’s next massive narrative stares us in the face… it’s not the election, Solana memecoins, restaking or gaming. It’s bigger than all those combined
It’s AI + crypto
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And it’s not just that AI will work better on crypto rails than tradfi rails, it’s that AI will work better on a decentralized web as well
In other words, AI + crypto are rearchitecting modern finance AND the internet itself
First, finance:
AI won’t have sufficient access to TradFi rails. That system is too opaque, trustful, slow and over-regulated
That doesn’t much matter, though, as AI has access to something better:
Decentralized, uncensorable, fully programmable, magic internet money (aka crypto) moving at the speed of light
Second, the web:
The centralized web (aka web2) presents many of the same hurdles as tradfi. Data is walled off, mutable, impermanent, over-regulated
And yet, almost like magic, we already have an alternative: the decentralized web
Open information flows onto permanent file storage like Arweave, IPFS, and inscriptions (see bitcoin ordinals or @asteroidxyz on Cosmos Hub)
That information is uncensorable, readily consumable by AI agents and (in the case of inscriptions) programmable/monetized
Blockchains themselves are a sort of internet (with AMMs and credit protocols and NFT launchpads, etc.) enabling trading, lending, creating, selling, etc. It’s everything the machines could want and need
We look to humans and tradfi companies for crypto’s true hockeystick moment, but instead we should look to AI
In effect, I believe we’ve been building a parallel financial system and internet that’s optimized for AI… and we didn’t even realize it in the early days
All this to say that I’ve shifted my thoughts from “crypto and web3 will absorb tradfi” to “crypto and web3 serve as the base layer for AI”
Web3 isn’t our internet… it will belong to the machines
That sounds like a trite soundbite, but it requires rewiring mental models
It’s as profound as shifting from a belief that the universe revolves around the earth, to a realization that the earth actually revolves around a random star in a random corner of an impartial and infinite universe
Tradfi and the existing internet was all built with humans at the center
Crypto, web3 and AI are all built with software at the center
It’s not “human-centric” technology. It’s “human adjacent” technology
Currently, software, AI and finance are kluged into our systems to benefit humankind
In the future, humankind will be kluged into decentralized finance and the decentralized web
This realization has already begun to happen (we see it in the price of NVDA stock and some early AI crypto plays)
But I think it’s only just begun
We stand on the cusp of a crypto + AI mania. And it could quite possibly be the biggest and most explosive financial change humanity ever endures
Money, data, software, all of it will begin to migrate from the old human-centric platforms to the new software-centric platforms
And it will happen with great violence
Such violence that I almost feel sorry for all the investors who have been shaken out of crypto by this little ant-sized bear market we’ve been going through
I know they’ll be back, though. That’s because we aren’t building the future of france. We’re laying the foundation for the machines
And they will own the future
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