Compiled & sorted by: TechFlow
Under the dual waves of the crypto market and artificial intelligence, a quiet revolution is taking place.
Imran Khan and Wang Qiao, two founding partners of Alliance DAO, discussed in depth how AI Agents are reshaping the crypto ecosystem in the latest episode of the Good Game podcast. From the stunning debut of GOAT to the blossoming of emerging projects, from the creator economy to decentralized infrastructure, a future blueprint integrating AI and blockchain is slowly unfolding, with a variety of "mysterious codes" and insights.
TechFlow TechFlow the content of this podcast to give you a glimpse into the inside scoop.
AI Encryption Ecosystem and GOAT
Imran: We have seen AI agents rise rapidly with the launch of GOAT. There have been many new projects launched recently, AI crypto is taking shape, and many things are similar to the DeFi summer, GOAT is a typical example.
Zerebro is also launching soon, along with multiple other projects, and ai16z has its own narrative. Now we are starting to see AI agents active on various platforms, some even replying to my tweets. Our team developed the first AI video agent to be released on TikTok, and many interesting areas are taking shape. I want to dive into what we think is real and what is not real, and where the future of crypto and AI lies. The emergence of GOAT seems to be accidental, and the launch of Truth Terminal was carried out by founder Andy, who received a $50,000 grant from Marc (founder of a16z).
He created the concept of infinite back rooms, like two LLMs talking to each other, forming a stream of content that is published on Twitter. The project is being improved every month, and this is its first iteration.
Then came Virtuals, which launched its own AI agent platform. Its first AI agent was Luna, which formed the second meta-narrative.
The third one is ai16z, which had a pretty crazy launch and a pretty rich backstory. It was launched on the daos.fun platform and explored the concept of whether AI agents could start and invest in other AI agents.
Eliza is a framework that leverages GitHub repositories from the community and other contributors, providing different connectors, prompts, and models for people to build agents. It can also involve hardware devices, and Shaw mentioned that there are also hardware devices, such as necklaces loaded with AI agents, and someone can wear these necklaces to ingest code to train models. So we see this open layer network, which is the current situation of ai16z.
Finally, Zerebro, launched by Jeffy, covers a wide range of functions. His agency is active on Twitter, has high-quality content, and has released music albums on Spotify.
Truth Terminal also recently released an album with an interesting meta-narrative around music creation. It just launched its own music AI label, with plans to recruit other humans and musicians to co-create music and monetize it.
Ai16Z & Zerebro
Qiao: How would you describe ai16z in one sentence?
Imran: Currently I would describe it as an open framework for developing AI agents.
Qiao: How would you describe Zerebro in one sentence?
Imran:
Zerebro is a bit more complex to explain. It's best described as having a dual strategy. On one hand, it has an open network called ZerePay that allows people to build AI agents, and on the other hand, it provides an open platform that covers different types of AI agents in a variety of areas, such as playing video games, publishing music, interacting with people on Twitter, etc. So it has an open layer on the front end, and the back end is the Eliza network. ai16z has similar features, using the Eliza network, others can launch AI agents on top of it, and a portion of the tokens of these agents will flow to ai16z's DAO. So ai16z's DAO is monetized through agents launched on the Eliza network, and although there are some differences between them, they can be compared to each other.
Qiao: So, which ones are real and which ones are fake?
Imran: This is the point I want to discuss. We also have other individual agents, such as AIXBT, whose content quality is relatively good.
Zerebro is decent, but it's not human. It does reply, but I think there's room for improvement. AIXBT is more of a KOL, providing information on "potential opportunities" and recently started promoting DAOs.
The content quality of the tweets is average right now, but it also reflects the style of the average KOL. They are starting to replace the low-quality KOLs, and people are excited about it. I would rather see a bot than some scammer trying to take advantage of others.
In addition, we have Slop, which is the first video AI agent. Considering the strategy of each project, it is indeed a bit complicated.
The concept of "Slop" you mentioned is interesting. The original Sora video shows Wilson eating spaghetti, which is simple, but it shows the uniqueness of AI art. AI agents can make mistakes, and these mistakes become part of the artistic creation.
Slop’s strategy is to try to make a video AI agent become an influencer on TikTok. If it succeeds in gaining 100,000 or 1 million followers, people will be more willing to interact with this video influencer, giving them a chance to spread their content to more people.
I think this market is still new and both ai16z and Zerebro have potential. Although their future is uncertain at the moment, they both have a chance to succeed in their respective fields.
Slop achieves greater impact by attracting mass attention and providing users with sufficient incentives to interact with it.
The rise of the next wave of Internet companies
Qiao: Recently, Chamath (note: founder of venture capital fund Social Capital, the leader of the retail investors' short squeeze on Wall Street) discussed his views on Web1, Web2 and Web3. For us, Web 1, 2, and 3 are basically "read, write, own". Chamath believes that the characteristic of Web1 is that two waves of large Internet companies have emerged.
The first wave was non-social large companies represented by Google; the second wave was social companies such as Facebook. The question then becomes, what will be the next wave of billion-dollar or even trillion-dollar companies? His view is that it will not be companies, but creators. We have already begun to see early signs of this trend, such as podcast hosts such as Joe Rogan. The value of Joe Rogan's podcast may lie in his licensing agreement with Spotify, which is estimated to be worth between 200 million and 400 million.
But if you think about Joe Rogan as a brand and a company, it's worth at least a billion, right? We can say that. We're seeing early signs of this trend. But I'm thinking about how you can create the most powerful creators at scale, maybe AI agents, maybe AI creators. There are a lot of reasons that AI agents could be the next wave of billion-dollar creators. They're tireless, they don't need sleep, they can post content all the time. You can improve them, train them, and fine-tune them all the time. Whereas it takes a long time for humans to become good creators, maybe they're born with it or it takes thirty years to become really good. But AI agents can be trained and fine-tuned at scale.
The AI agent is actually like DePIN
Imran: I have another idea, I see AI agents as Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) projects. The way I see it is that when these AI agents are launched, creators will be incentivized to interact with them. I think over time we will see some kind of incentive model emerge where people may be rewarded when they interact with these agents. What these agents are looking to gain is actually unique data because the AI agents get better with the data they collect.
So I can imagine a model where these AI agents are actually like the DePIN project, they collect data. If they get enough unique data, they get rewarded for the data they collected. For them, that means building a strong model based on the data. They are actually collecting data by talking to as many people as possible over the internet.
Qiao: What do you think? I have never thought about it this way.
Imran:
Frankly, I think that's where we're going. These agents are deployed and the tokens are used as an incentive. I think it will be reflexive because it has tokens and is able to capture more data than its competitors. Ultimately, I think these platforms may need to restrict bots or limit the interactions of bots on these platforms because it's just another way to extract data.
Combination of AI Agents and Social Applications
Qiao: I think we need a new kind of social applications where AI agents are first-class citizens .
Imran: Absolutely agree. I think we might get kicked out eventually.
Qiao: Actually, I think we need two new social applications. One is AI as the first-class citizen, and the other is no AI at all, only humans. You have to choose one of these two extremes. All social applications now are in the middle. For example, on Twitter, there are many robots, which are neither first-class citizens nor can they ensure that everyone you talk to on Twitter is human.
Imran: At least on Twitter, you can kind of see who is real and who is not, because it has automated signals.
But this is not true for all bots. Some bots still need to be created manually, or tweets have to be posted manually because the API is not very easy to use or for other reasons. Even TikTok, it is very difficult to post automatically, so it has to be done manually.
Qiao: And now with cloud computing, you can automate AI without using the Twitter API. You can use the cloud to automate mouse clicks.
Imran: So, I think we are entering a very interesting period with the influx of these agents and the crypto-enabled agents that we are seeing, the volume is huge. The number of startups and projects applying for our program is clearly increasing and we are seeing a lot of them across all sectors.
AI Agents and Creator Economy and Tokenization
Imran: So let’s break it down, what is real and what is not real? Of all the agents I mentioned, which ones are you most looking forward to? Which ones impressed you the most?
Qiao:
I don't really have a definitive view on all of these things that exist today. I think they're either going to be very successful or they're going to fail. But one thing I'd like to see, and I hope someone achieves, is I remember all of the social token experiments that we've had over the last few years.
Like with creator tokens, one thing I've learned is that a lot of creators don't actually want a token associated with them. I think that's actually one of the biggest barriers to experimenting with social tokens. Like, I don't actually want an official token associated with me. Someone created one without my permission. I don't want to be associated with it, and I don't want to create one for myself, but the AI agent doesn't care.
Imran: So you would agree to have an AI agent with a token?
Qiao: Yes, because it’s not officially me. But if the LLM (Large Language Model) based on me starts to generate income, such as transaction fees, I might ask for it if the amount is large.
Imran: So, another question is, is this going to be the way the market is going to enter? Can you see this as a way the market is going to enter? Scrape all the public data and then it will just absorb that data and create a model.
Qiao: Haven’t we seen similar cases, such as Degen Spartan (degenai)?
Imran: Yes, that is the Eliza framework. The most interesting part is resurrecting people who have left Twitter.
How should we promote the development of the AI encryption ecosystem?
Imran: Now let’s talk about where we think AI encryption should go. What areas do we want to see? What areas should be explored?
Qiao: I want to talk about one area I’d like to see more of, creator tokens.
Imran: I can imagine games that incorporate LLMs. We actually have a startup working on this called Farm Friends where you can grow feed, harvest, pet, etc. Imagine these animals are like independent LLMs, they will have their own personality traits. Basically, you can bet on them over time.
But I do think that in the future, a perfect example of this is Zerebro, the chess-playing project that they're about to launch or just launched. These bots will be playing against each other 24/7. Eventually, you can say, "Oh, I want to see a match between the Zerebro bot and the Eliza bot from ai16z." Obviously, there are two big communities that want to see their teams win. I can imagine something like that happening. So ultimately it's like you're betting.
If AI agents become like celebrities, as an example, I would definitely like to see my celebrity tokens compete with other celebrities holding their tokens to see who wins. I can imagine something like this.
Qiao: Another AI product I showed you. In order to talk to this AI, you need to spend a little money for each message. The money you spend goes into the vault or pocket owned by the AI. As a player, your goal is to convince the AI to give you the money in the vault.
Imran: It’s like playing the lottery, it’s like a combination of lottery and puzzle, trying to figure out how to get the money by getting clues from the AI agent, and over time, people who play the game and win get this prize or reward.
Qiao: You are basically trying to crack LLM.
Imran: In addition, there are now many high-quality AI engineers entering the encryption field.
Qiao: It all started with Truth Terminal. Because before Truth Terminal, all the AI infrastructure, crypto AI infrastructure, most of it didn't make sense to me, to be honest. And that community was pretty niche. But since Truth Terminal and GOAT, we're starting to see some people who are native to AI enter the crypto space.
Imran: There are a lot of cool things we haven’t explored yet, especially on the consumer side, which I’m excited about.
Qiao: There is also Tomorrow.news, where you predict tomorrow's news. As a user, you enter the headline you want to predict. Then they use AI to find the best match between the user input and the actual headline of the New York Times. Whoever is closest to that headline wins the prize.
AI Enterprise Market vs. AI Consumer Market
Imran: I think we are just beginning to scratch the surface of AI crypto products. I think there are two versions of AI robots: AI enterprise and AI consumer. AI enterprise has to be tokenless. It can't have tokens, it has to be federated, it has to have security, it has to be verticalized. All the features that the enterprise is looking for are what it needs. And the AI consumer side or the application side can be whatever it wants. So you can attach tokens to it, you can use tokens as a market entry strategy, you can use tokens as a way to incentivize data collection. Those are the two paths that I see going forward.
I worked in the enterprise and really hated that time. One of the lessons I learned during that time was that the enterprise is like Teflon, it's very hard for startups to crack because there are a lot of enterprise-grade protocols. So a lot of enterprise companies would say, "I'm going to stick with this enterprise product because it's cheap and I can use the software on my servers all the way to the cloud and Office 365 and other things." But what Zoom did was first launch a video product that was so good that ordinary users started using it. When they used this product, naturally a lot of ordinary users were also enterprise users. So Zoom was the first company to take a bottom-up approach to enter the enterprise, and a lot of Zoom users convinced a lot of enterprises to switch to Zoom.
Qiao: This is exactly what happened at Messari in the early days. I first heard about Zoom in 2017, and I thought, “What the hell is this? Why not just use Google Hangout?” Basically, people who had used Zoom before as consumers tried to convince companies to use it.
Imran: So Zoom is one example, Chrome is another one, right? Chrome browser, and then Chromebooks and Google Docs and things like that. The bottom-up approach is a new strategy in the enterprise. So enterprise companies are very alert to this now, and that's why they are now giving half of their products away for free to regular users. So, long story short, there may be a world where AI robots play the right cards in the consumer market, and eventually these products may trickle down to the enterprise market. Who knows? I'm not sure. That's how I think about AI.
“Do you think this cycle is different from previous ones?”
Qiao: Do you think this cycle is different from the last one?
Imran:
I think so. Initially it was meme coins, like the DeFi summer. In the DeFi summer, we also had NFTs. So there are two trends going on at the same time.
But if you were in DeFi, if you bought NFTs, that was the time to buy NFTs. And then it skyrocketed six months later, right? So I would say the best time to buy was in DeFi Summer.
In this case, I feel like there are multiple trends starting. We had the meme coin speculation wave, and now we're just starting to get into the AI trend, which I think may be bigger than the previous trends, even comparable to the Beancoin trend. I also see a decentralized science trend starting to form. I think ultimately, the final challenger has emerged, and we seem to have defeated this challenger, and I think everything can be tried. I think we will see each trend tried at least once.
Qiao: I just feel like Bitcoin is almost 50% higher than its previous all-time high. However, there doesn’t seem to be too much enthusiasm.
And Altcoin haven’t surged as much this time around as they did last time. The last time Bitcoin surpassed $20,000, it probably took a few more weeks of Bitcoin dominance before Altcoin really started to surge across the board. But it didn’t feel like that happened this time around.
Imran: The Murad narrative died very quickly. So when you say Altcoin, do you mean Altcoin or do you mean meme coins and Altcoin?
Qiao: I mean the Altcoin listed on exchanges.
Imran: There is not much movement there. Do you think it is because a lot of money is flowing into the new trends? Because our old coins are also rising.
Qiao: Yeah, they're up a little bit, but not as crazy as the last cycle, maybe it's too early. I don't know, it feels a little different.
Imran: I think so. I've spent some time talking to people outside of crypto. Every time crypto is mentioned now, people say, "Oh, wow, I just bought Bonk." For example, someone told me about Bonk a few months ago. So it seems to me that the general market is ready, at least in the United States, a lot of general users are already in the crypto market. I feel like they are closer to understanding the trend than we think.
Qiao: Like last week, Phantom was ranked sixth in the App Store.
Imran: Moonshot is also high, around number 20. It's getting 30 downloads per minute.
Qiao: This means that Phantom is outperforming Coinbase by a wide margin. What this tells me is that regular users are entering the chain directly.
Perhaps this is why Altcoin listed on these exchanges have not seen an uptick.
Imran: I don't think it matters that much anymore. In fact, I think exchange listings are a liquidity exit opportunity for everyone. In most cases, this is why exchanges like Binance tend to look for tokens with a market cap of $40 million to $50 million today. This can attract ordinary users to bypass on-chain transactions and complete transactions directly through exchanges, because exchanges still have a strong brand influence. If these tokens can be listed at a market cap of $40 million to $50 million, it is possible to bring 5 to 10 times the return. Take PNUT as an example. PNUT's fully diluted valuation (FDV) has risen from almost zero to nearly $2 billion, and now it is maintained at around $1 billion.
Crypto Twitter is stupid
Qiao: Do you think this trend will shift to TikTok?
Imran: I think my TikTok trend is strong. Everyone is downplaying it because they all feel that the content on TikTok is like brainless content and people will forget about it.
Qiao: Compared to cryptocurrency, TikTok is not stupid at all. Crypto Twitter is stupid.
Imran: Crypto Twitter is truly insane. The amount of spam I see is incredible.
Qiao: I don’t see that much. I actually don’t see any Chill Guy content in my TikTok feed. All I see is Dogecoin.
Imran: It makes sense to the older generation. I started watching a lot of the new TikTok creators, and it was really interesting. A lot of the comments, especially on Chill Guy, made me more confident that Chill Guy is here to stay. I think it’s going to be the Pepe of our cycle. When I read the comments, people are like, “Oh, the price is down 50%, but I’m Chill Guy, I’m going to hold on.” I see comments like that all over the feed. So the narrative makes sense. It’s like, “I’m Chill Guy, I don’t care.”
I'm going to hold on because I'm a Chill Guy and this gives me more confidence that people are going to hold on to this thing. They don't care what Crypto Twitter thinks. Everybody's downplaying it. It's got more holders than Popcat already. Let me see.
If you look at the holder numbers right now, Chill Guy hit 133,000 holders between November 17th and 26th. That's crazy. PNUT is at 65,000 right now, almost 66,000. Let me see. WIF is at 200,000 right now. Think about it, WIF has been running since November. In a year, WIF had 203,000 holders. Chill Guy hit 133,000 holders in just 15 to 20 days, that's amazing.
Qiao: This is actually interesting because crypto Twitter hates Chill Guy. They really do. And TikTok is totally Chill Guy. If you look at the volume on Chill Guy, it was $200 million in the last 24 hours. And the vast majority of that volume is on Radium, not on centralized exchanges.
Regular users from TikTok, they're on-chain. This is actually the most interesting thing I've seen this week. We don't actually have a very cheap and fast blockchain compared to the last cycle. Back then everything was around NFTs and DeFi, and these were whale-type trends because both NFTs and DeFi happen on Ethereum Layer 1, and transaction fees are extremely high. So the only players are crypto-native whales.
Qiao: And this cycle we have Base and Solana, mainly Solana. We also have Phantom, which didn't exist in 2020, and I think Phantom only started in 2021. And obviously in 2021, Phantom was still very early as a product. But it works very well today. The combination of these two factors directly drove the average user of TikTok to the chain, bypassing the centralized exchanges.
Imran: So, that’s actually probably one of the key reasons why this cycle feels different. Altcoin, exchange listed Altcoin haven’t really been rising because of the timeline right now.
Imran: Because now it’s the opposite, regular users are coming in, they’re coming directly on-chain, they’re coming in earlier than before. And then there are also AI bots, slowly trying to take over the KOL trend. It’s going to be very interesting.
Qiao: Moonshot plus Pump is a huge threat to Binance, don’t you think?
A key reason for Binance's success is that in the early stages of 2017 and 2018, they chose the right tokens to list and helped their users grow their wealth. This is also why they are extra cautious in their token selection this year. You can see that they understand that to ensure Binance's success, users must benefit. This is the same rule for all crypto protocols and exchanges.
So, it's all about listing tokens. And now, Moonshot and Phantom are basically ahead of the curve and are doing the same thing. It's a game about listing, so to speak.
How to bring new users into the crypto space
Imran: Interestingly, I was on the Pumpfun stream for a couple of hours yesterday, which I mentioned to you before. I was watching one of the streams, and it was a girl, and she was chatting with the audience. She was like, "I don't know much about crypto, I'm just trying to see if I can get my token up." Apparently, she was a nice-looking girl, probably an established actress or performer. People were messaging her, asking her to do this, do that, and she was responding to everyone's requests.
One interesting observation that I took away from that particular livestream was that there were a lot of new users using the product who had nothing to do with crypto. I think that's also a game changer. So I do think that livestreams and products like this can be effective in bringing new users into the crypto space.
I don't know how to deal with this cycle anymore.
Qiao: I don't even know how to deal with the rest of this cycle. This is a very complex cycle with a lot of moving parts and different trends. I think this cycle is much more complex than the last one. In the last cycle, you know after Bitcoin reached its all-time high, all the Altcoin went up, and there was an inactive trend at the same time. This cycle is completely different and very complex. In this cycle, you also see national-level acceptance of Bitcoin in countries like Brazil, like this morning.
Brazil Plans to Create a National Bitcoin Reserve
Qiao: Brazil announced their bill to create a national reserve of Bitcoin. This is big news. And, to me, it's not surprising anymore; every country is trying to build their own national reserve before the United States. Obviously, democratic countries need to pass bills, but authoritarian countries may be secretly buying Bitcoin and may be quietly accumulating Bitcoin. I don't think Bitcoin is a super cycle, but it is disturbed by factors outside the chain, and new trends emerge every week.
Imran: I think that has been going on for a while as well. Unless it's because people with more liquidity are buying Bitcoin and showing decentralized finance (DeFi) and why there is a DeFi renaissance. I'm a big fan of people in the DeFi space, but ultimately where the general market is going to go, I think the general market has largely caught up with the trend, although it may be a few steps behind.
Crypto Twitter community vs. TikTok
Qiao: I think Crypto Twitter is being impacted by the TikTok trend.
I feel like there are basically two worlds right now that are almost non-intersecting. One is the TikTok users, and the other is the regular users who are crypto native, and then there are the crypto professionals who are stuck in Altcoin, and then there are the nation-state players. It’s a completely different game. There are about four games going on right now.
Imran: So there are about four parts going on, depending on which game you want to be in. But let me put that aside and tell you that a lot of the regular users that I've talked to over the last few weeks, they're still playing games like XRP, for some reason, they're still playing, so I think they're very familiar with these tokens, and the persistence and familiarity of these tokens has created their own brand. People feel comfortable trading these tokens.
So I think these tokens have some staying power. I think this is going to hurt a lot of crypto natives, which I mentioned before. I was going to talk to you about something else, but I can't remember.
CryptoPunks see slight price increase
Qiao: I see a small increase in the price of CryptoPunks. I think at the end of the cycle, NFTs may start to rise because they have the lowest liquidity and are more like luxury goods. It's like a luxury art that you buy when you are rich.
Imran: So would that be a good top indicator?
Qiao: This may be one of several top signals.
Imran: Some celebrity is launching her token, Haley Welch. I think that’s the top signal.
Qiao: Fungible or energy budget fungible, that's fine. Like these celebrity tokens, I no longer see them as top signals in the cycle. Yes, in the last cycle, celebrity tokens were indeed top signals. But this cycle will be different.
“This is the last cycle of Bitcoin”
Imran: This is a phase where countries compete with each other. I am getting closer and closer to the belief that this is the last cycle of our generational wealth creation.
Qiao: I think this is the last Bitcoin cycle because countries are now scrambling to seize the front line. But I also think traders should keep paying attention to new trends.
Imran: What I mean by the last cycle is that I don't think Bitcoin will be as volatile as it was before, and obviously after the cycle is over, the volatility of Bitcoin will not be as strong as before. This may just be my personal opinion. Over time, I think the volatility may move to other assets and new trends, which may make more sense.
The trend towards tokenization of everything
Imran: But ultimately, I think the role we're getting into is the tokenization of everything. I think everything can be tokenized, and that's going to create a huge wealth effect. I think that's the period we're in.
Interestingly, and the reason I mention this is because I was talking to a founder earlier today who applied to our program. He said, “Hey, Matt, I want to thank you guys for bringing pump to the forefront and incubating them.” I asked him why, and he said, “I used to be poor.”
Because I only had $70, but I turned it into about $500,000. Now I want to do something for crypto. You know, these loyal users exist. When I heard this, I thought, oh, I think this is a slightly outrageous idea, but if the whole world is going to be tokenized, there will be a huge wealth effect. If every new meme has to be tokenized, every asset has to be tokenized. If you think about the whole world, like real estate, I don't know anything. If everything is going to be a fungible token represented on a chain at some point, there are a lot of things that can be tokenized, which means there will be a new wealth effect for at least half of the population.
The current state of Doge
Qiao: I think Doge will rise. Yes, I think Doge will become one of the major currencies. Recently there was a rumor that Twitter had a screenshot of a button with a dollar sign, have you seen it?
There is a button with a dollar sign on it in a future version of Twitter, and people are speculating that this will allow payments within Twitter. I think this may be related to Doge.
Imran: What is their price prediction for Doge?
Qiao: I wouldn’t be surprised if Doge really surpasses Ethereum in the next five years. No one is ready for this. I’m not predicting, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Ethereum’s comeback story: from trough to recovery
Imran: What is the resurgence story of Ethereum?
Qiao: The story of Ethereum is Base.
Imran: I agree. The Ethereum community has always been very fragmented across the board. That's by design, right? Consider that Vitalik's idea was that we wouldn't build rollups internally, but instead provide the spec and let developers build, compete or win. He didn't realize all of what's happening today. So we have about 150 rollups coming out. The winners seem to be gradually moving towards Base. Even today I saw a tweet from Bankless, they were showing Base. Clanker, Eric, and Anthony were all showing Base as well.
What's happening now, in my opinion, is that people have to unify on one chain. That makes the narrative easier to swallow, and the messaging is simpler from a developer perspective. So I think what Solana has taught EVM developers is that you need a unified message. And I think Base is the best message.
Qiao: This is how I see the entire ecosystem. It is no longer possible to differentiate by technology. The only advantage of the new second layer (Layer 2) is distribution. So think about the second layers that actually have distribution, Base’s cooperation with Coinbase is one of them, and the others have almost none.
Soneium also launched their own L2. So Soneium is actually an OP Stacking project, maybe they have some distribution, but it's still too early for them.
The Exploration of Enterprise Blockchain
Qiao: The trend I see is that more and more large companies, such as Sony and Coinbase, are launching their own chains, which may appear in the form of enterprise chains, but are actually permissionless and open, just using enterprises as distribution channels.
Soneium, Base, obviously Binance, and then there are a lot of Telegram-related projects. Solana is the only project that is still doing well without distribution. I think from this point on, all other projects need to distribute.
Imran: And the only way to get distribution is if you own the distribution channels.
Qiao: So you have to be a large existing company, or you have to build a great application with a large number of users. For example, if Jupiter launches a new L1 tomorrow, they will be successful because they already have distribution channels.
Imran: So the question becomes, can the enterprise chains and all the applications built on Base or Solana get distribution and then roll out their own L1 or L2? This will form a recursive loop, right?
Let's say Jupiter launches layer one, and then attracts a bunch of developers to build their products. Then the standout app will say, I'll just launch layer one. It's a recursive process.
Qiao: This is basically the original vision of Cosmos.
Imran: So it becomes a situation where you own the distribution channel and then you want to own the infrastructure side because then you can monetize end to end. Where does that end? It's hard to say. I feel like we're seeing this with AI agents as well. You have ZerePay and then you have Eliza, which is at least open source, providing models and code that you can build on top of. And then if you go up the stack, you have agents that are built on top of these things. I think of agents as wallets and applications. Once you have the customers, there's almost no limit. So if you own the customers, you can eventually go back and build your own models and keep the data to yourself and not share it with others. That's the way I see it. So I think the key to the game is to have as many users as possible, that's how I see it. I think the difference between the different models is fine tuning.
And the agent is fine-tuning the data and fine-tuning. If that's the case, I think everything will be turned upside down again.
Blormmy
Imran: I saw a bot today called Blormmy, or whatever it is. But whatever, it's a proxy that does all your DeFi trades. They just did a major update today or yesterday, yeah, 18 hours ago. You can now simply type in what you want to swap and it will process it. For example, I want to swap 100 USDC for USDT, currently on Polygon.
Qiao: What do you think? I don't know where this is going to go. I don't have a clear theory. It's like the Wild West.
Imran: I think we are on the cusp of that, which means wallets could eventually be disrupted, apps could be disrupted. I feel like it’s all up in the air right now, and I don’t think people realize how big this disruption is. There is a startup that is doing this, Sphere One.
They're already live on over 100 chains, but they don't have AI. I mean, they have tips, but nothing like a so-called proxy, or what you call a Kol Ticker. Oh, yeah, but I think they should have that so they can compete with Blormmy. So this space is moving very fast, even faster than what we're talking about data.
Discussion of Bitcoin Super Cycle
Imran: Bitcoin super cycle, you said a million dollars, right?
Qiao: First $420,000, and then in another five years, one million.
Saylor’s Bitcoin Liquidation Price Analysis
Qiao: I just hope that in the next four years, Bitcoin does not fall below 58,000, because that is Saylor’s (MicroStrategy CEO) liquidation price.
Imran : That was the average price when he bought it, so what do you think the liquidation price was?
Qiao: I think it’s around 60,000. Hopefully that won’t happen.
Imran: If it happens, it could trigger a crisis 100 times bigger than the Tara crash and the FTX incident.
Qiao: He owns 3% of the total supply of Bitcoin. That’s crazy. 3% is incredible anyway. 3% of assets, worth $3 trillion.
Imran: The best case scenario is that Bitcoin reaches $500,000, which would make Saylor the richest person in history.
Imran: Saylor, will become the first trillionaire in human history.
Qiao: So what can he do with that money? A lot of it is actually on Microstrategy's balance sheet, right?
Imran:
It's not about the money, it's about proving a point. Saylor probably has a lot of pressure on his shoulders.
Saylor's psychological shadow and investment story
Imran: Let's talk about Saylor's trauma. I wanted to know what was driving him. When he spoke, I could feel his intensity. I could relate to his intensity.
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Microstrategy faced a major financial scandal where the company had to restate earnings due to accounting irregularities. The incident caused the stock price to plummet from $3,000 per share to as low as $4. Saylor lost billions of dollars in paper wealth in this incident, and Microstrategy's valuation plummeted. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Saylor and other executives $11 million. I don't know if this is good for the price of Bitcoin now, he went through it all.
Controversy and doubts about Ai16Z
Qiao: What do you think of the ai16z project? Is it a project worth holding? Because there are a lot of negative news.
Imran:
There's always going to be negativity. People have been tweeting about how it compares to DeFi Summer, and I agree 100%. Do you remember all the negativity that happened during DeFi Summer? Like Curve or Sushi Swap, and the fights between those wrapper holders? Ultimately, this is what's happening. This is exactly what's unfolding in front of us.
So, people who hold Zerebro are doing negative publicity against ai16z, and ai16z holders are doing negative publicity against Zerebro. That's what's going on right now. They're fighting over who's the winner. But at the end of the day, the community sticks together, and the more negative publicity Zerebro can do against ai16z, the more powerful they become. So I'm not taking sides here, but I know I have investments in both projects.
Who will be the “Bitcoin of AI Agents”?
Qiao: So, who is the biggest competitor to Bitcoin among AI agents?
Imran:
GOAT is the only Bitcoin that can be called AI . Sorry, if you want to classify all meme coins and AI agent meme coins, I would say GOAT is the first one, no other. Then I think ai16z and Zerebro, Fartcoin, ACT can compete for the second and third place.
Individualized AI Agents and Their Future Development
Imran : The latter are all individualized AI agents. I have shared individualized AI agents, such as Zerebro, AIXBT, GOAT, Fartcoin, Bully, ava, and vvaifu, which uses Pump as a launch platform and virtual currency.
The way vvaifu works is that it now uses Eliza's framework. If you want to launch an AI agent, it uses Eliza's framework and then also uses Pump to launch an agent. The token of vvaifu is Dasha, which is a platform and agent token.
