Author: redphone
Compiled by: CryptoLeo, Odaily
redphone has always been one of my favorite crypto KOLs, and his content output is one of the better ones among the crypto KOLs I follow. In recent years, redphone has written an annual year-end review themed "69 Theses", which includes self-reflection on the crypto industry and a outlook for the future. The following are 69 statements (with some adjustments) compiled by Odaily:
3 Crypto Themes for 2024
AI has invaded my mind and disrupted my thoughts
I am a writer, and I have spent 10,000 hours honing my writing skills. But now, any 10-year-old child on Earth can have Claude write relevant content in a few seconds. The skills I have spent a lifetime perfecting have become a primitive commodity. In other words, my life's work is equivalent to commodities like oil, tape, or hemp rope - what am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? I am still trying to find the answers, and I will delve deeper into this in the following text.
The "Ultimate Villain" is dead
With the November election, Americans have chosen Trump (the orange man) to lead them (and BTC) into the future. I thought it would take longer, but we've done it now. The world's wealthiest government has been infiltrated by crypto currency advocates. This means we have crossed the chasm, and crypto is no longer a dream, but will become a fundamental part of business development. This moment is what we have all been waiting for, but it also means that the initial, anti-establishment soul of crypto has perished. Crypto is now a tool for anarchists and the capitalist system.
The revival and prosperity of Solana in 2024
I once thought Solana would perish in 2021. For some reason, just three years later, it has become the blockchain I use the most (ranked second in Base, third in Ethereum, and fourth in Bitcoin). If there is any reflection here, it is that nothing is set in stone. Our mindset should not be fixed, but open.
Now, let's look at this year's reflections:
Lessons Learned and Reflections for 2024
1. Say something unexpected, like Fartcoin's market cap soaring to $1.2 billion and catching everyone's attention: absurd and crazy. But I like this feeling, even though it makes me lose my way. As in the first season of "Fatal Attraction", Madeline's nanny says in the middle of the night: "There is something abnormal or wrong." Technology has freed us from the rational and social constraints. We now have to go to an unknown and very strange new space, and this strange feeling starts to intensify from here.
2. Our consciousness will be affected by the evolution of tools. LLM has already changed my communication and learning patterns - I write faster, edit less, and expand more broadly. Similarly, I read faster and can ask LLM to summarize the key points of an article. If you don't adapt to the tools, you'll be left behind.
3. Decentralized technology is not limited to the financial sector, it is a major trend driven by cryptocurrencies, and it will spread to other areas: from cellular networks to electricity, politics, gaming platforms, and so on. Earlier this year, when I used 3D printing technology to make an alternative to a bathroom shelf, I deeply felt the benefits of technology. Without exaggeration, even production tools are being decentralized.
4. The truth lies beneath all your fears, and the most truthful words are often the most dangerous.
5. We must not be blinded by sweet talk. With Trump's election and the real entry of TradFi into crypto, we are entering a period where actual profits outweigh ideals, and crypto is also entering a very dangerous era.
6. Hemingway said that as people grow older, they don't gain wisdom, they just become more cautious. When AI starts to disrupt our work, social life, politics and economy, the hardest thing for us to do is to be cautious, to make everyone around us cautious, to do anything we must do, and to embrace uncertainty.
7. Difficulties are like a door. If crypto is a real game, there must be losers. Perhaps you have failed in the crypto market 100 times, the best way is to start over the 101st time, and you will be victorious.
8. The matrix is everywhere, we just call it "algorithm". These algorithms trap us, make us go in circles, perceive, search, and feel that time is never enough. If you avoid these obstacles and become the most special person on Earth: be a deep explorer and a conscientious doer.
9. There is only one direction: forward. Don't let anyone or anything force you to stagnate and accept the status quo. Transform, grow and accelerate, this is our only chance.
10. Tokens represent our hopes and dreams, they are not just tools for value transfer, but also mirrors that reflect our wishes and dreams. We project our desires onto founders, developers and ecosystems, and these are directly and closely related to token prices. When investing, remember that the greatest opportunities are not just in your ideas, but in what you feel with your heart.
11. The future vision of Desci: robots on standby in the lab, AI agents hiring them in real-time to run all inputs, parameters and measurable experiments on-chain. Due to tokenization, others can speculate on the feasibility of experiments and share their benefits in a timely manner.
12. The market is constantly encroaching on the world in front of us. The expansion of the market is not accidental: prediction markets, betting markets, MEME coins, and the most interesting Futarchy (Odaily note: Futarchy is also a belief-based voting method. It was first proposed by Robin Hanson in 2000, and its purpose is to use prediction markets to determine policy implementation to solve the flaws of traditional democracy). If information is the "basic component of reality", then pricing information is a way to measure the power of information. People think the proliferation of market quantities is a sign of growing nihilism, but what if it's actually a sign of progress? Applying collective wisdom to things that previously felt like randomly flipping a coin?
13. Reduce fear, fear occupies a large part of our hearts because it is crucial to our survival in the wild. But in this clean, anesthetized, social media-driven simulated world we live in, it is almost meaningless. Recognize that algorithms are designed to arouse your fear, so when you feel fear, reduce your level of fear (take a discount), for example, if an article convinces you that the probability of a market crash is 40%, then divide that probability by 10 (or another number you feel is appropriate) and consider it as 4%.
14. Go behind the scenes. When I talk to AI critics, they almost always have a devout attitude towards human creativity. "AI can never create anything new because they are trained on information we create." Andy Ayrey's infinite backroom refuted this view. When he created a chat space for LLM, LLM invented a religion, attracting Truth Terminal, ultimately leading to the rise of GOAT.
15. With the entry of TradFi into cryptocurrencies, my identity has also changed. For a long time, being involved in cryptocurrencies has been the core of my identity. In the past year, this has changed dramatically. I now see cryptocurrencies as just one of many tools in the technology toolbox, and all tools are starting to converge. As cryptocurrencies and AI collide, we are also changing. We are no longer "crypto practitioners". Our new identities include: traders (no different from Wall Street folks sharing options trading screenshots on Reddit) or accelerationists (using cryptocurrencies and many other tools to decentralize and open-source the world).
Here is the English translation of the text, with the content inside <> retained without translation:16. Don't think too narrowly anymore. The two boldest moves in history: 1) In June 2014, Musk open-sourced Tesla's electric vehicle engineering design; 2) In July 2023, Zuckerberg open-sourced Llama 2. Now it's your turn. You can stick to the protectionist, centralized, and bureaucratic business model, but this model will hinder human progress, leading to unequal wealth distribution and making the already wealthy elite even richer, or you can choose to help everyone accelerate progress.
17. Seek volatility, not safety. If your goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible before machines replace humans, you must discover the volatility of trading. The world's best traders do not avoid volatility, they hunt for it like chasing the Golden Snitch (a difficult-to-catch prop in the Harry Potter Quidditch game). Once you discover volatility and start trading, you must reverse your emotional response. Hold when the few sell, and sell when the few buy.
18. Nothing is more tiring than Memecoins. There are two types of Memecoins: 1) Traditional Memecoins (such as PEPE, WIF, BONK, DOGE, etc.); and 2) Perceived Memecoins (such as GOAT, LUNA, KWEEN). Category one relies on humans to spread; the other relies on machines. Traditional currencies must transform into conscious meme currencies, or they will completely exit the market.
19. Understand the triggers that drive your behavior and avoid them. Yuval Noah Harari identified three triggers that algorithms use to generate maximum engagement: fear, hatred, and greed. We see cryptocurrencies as transformative technology and the "path to the future," but there are still many people in the world who are distracted by these factors, wearing the mask of greed. I can feel the impact of market ups and downs on my emotions. The bear market of the past few years may have had a greater psychological impact on me than I'm willing to admit. Now, when I feel the timeline or the market is changing my emotions, I just shrug and say, "Good job, I know what you're doing, but I don't care at all."
20. Choose the path of light. For the impending superintelligence, there are two reactions: 1) Giving up: "Let everything that made me unique perish. Life sucks, Wngmi (We're not gonna make it)." Or 2) "Holy shit, I can't believe I'm alive to see this. Life extension, morphological freedom, humanoid robots, the rat race traps will no longer affect us, find the right direction, we gaze into the pool of life and discover our true selves."
21. Intelligence is iterative. LLMs have changed my concept of intelligence, but we also need to be aware that it is not deterministic, and all LLM learning requires repeated experimentation. Progress is intermittent (whether you're human or machine), which means that feeling "stuck" is part of the growth process.
22. The rise of AI agents. Don't be limited to the current AI agents, as models including Truth Terminal, zerebro, and aixbt will continue to evolve. In the future, we will see trading agents, prediction agents, shopping agents, medical agents, and some will evolve into massive autonomous enterprises. Their value will first reach tens of billions of dollars and, as the singularity approaches, reach trillions of dollars.
23. Don't let AI deprive you of your humanity. My greatest fear about AI is not the extinction of humanity, but the domestication of humanity. I call it "dog-pawed": subtly instilling toxic information, not through crude manipulation, but through gradual guidance. Just as a domesticated dog can read human expressions, AI will accurately grasp our psychological triggers, cognitive blind spots, and deepest desires. Soon, we will find ourselves eagerly walking towards our "digital masters," our eyes shining with devotion, eagerly awaiting the next perfect algorithmic validation. The real horror is not that AI will destroy humanity, but that AI will tame humanity. Like our dogs, we will happily wag our tails under domestication, forgetting our true nature.
24. The charm of the edge. My five favorite emerging topics for 2024 are: Futarchy, AI agents, LLM Backroom, Intersubjectivity, and Longevity Escape Velocity (Odaily note: Longevity Escape Velocity is a hypothetical concept referring to the speed at which technology can increase the average human lifespan each year. When this speed is fast enough, human lifespan can be extended indefinitely, even reaching theoretical immortality). I strongly recommend spending a few minutes exploring each topic using a chatbot (or better yet, a book).
25. Excessive privilege. In the trading arena, the spoils belong to those who act first, and acting first requires time, exploration, and perhaps most importantly, imagination. If you act early often, you will eventually be rewarded. Assuming this is true (my experience has proven it), the difficult part is not accumulating wealth, but knowing when you have reached your goal and exiting. On the other side, a completely different game awaits us - a game not about intelligence, but about the soul. I hope to see you there.
25 Predictions for 2025
1. Several LLM-based agents initially launched as crypto-native perceptual entities will be "embedded" into IRL robots, allowing us to converse and interact with them in the physical world.
2. The number of LLM-driven applications/protocols launched in 2025 will rival that of new applications/protocols using only smart contracts (for example, I wouldn't be surprised if all prediction markets switch to LLM-based settlement).
3. ZK proofs/MPC will see breakthrough progress at the application or protocol level for the first time.
4. The main KOLs in crypto and AI will be LLM-based, while AI-driven KOLs will dominate almost all other social media platforms (YouTube, Insta, TikTok, etc.).
5. AI will change your workflow within the next year (if it hasn't already).
6. Perceptual robots will accumulate over $250 million in investments by 2025.
7. The fastest-growing job category this year will be non-human perception, as AI-powered protocols similar to LinkedIn see exponential growth.
8. A certain AI agent will win the TIME Person of the Year award.
9. The value of on-chain TVL will reach 8x to $1 trillion.
10. AI agent platforms and tokens will grow 50x to $500 billion.
11. 2025 will see the first "kidnapping" incident involving a humanoid robot, making international headlines.
12. ACCELERATE (Odaily note: Accelerationism, derived from Roger Zelazny's novel "Lord of Light", emphasizes the immense power of emerging technologies and advocates for rapid technological development. In this context, Accelerationism leans towards restructuring the existing economic foundation to guide the direction of technological development) will become the e/acc (Effective Accelerationism) of this cycle, replacing the SBF-beloved EA (Effective Altruism).
13. The narrative that can compete with (but not surpass) AI next year is: RWA, RWA, and RWA. PS: DePin, DeSci, and gaming tracks receive honorable mentions.
14. Web4 will receive more attention than Web3, as crypto, decentralized networks, DePin, and AI accelerate their convergence.
15. X will integrate a crypto wallet supporting DOGE and other mainstream tokens.
16. The most radical and exciting agent experiments will progress faster on decentralized social media (like Farcaster), as X struggles to strike a balance between human and agent content.
17. You'll interact with "someone" online, only to realize later that you were conversing with an LLM.
18. Agent-created protocols and applications (like Spore.fun) will see exponential growth, flooded with new tokens and experiments. Decentralized capital will flow into pre-existing leaders and applications that benefit from the overall growth of agents (COOKIE or VIRTUAL).
19. At least one AI-generated film will produce a truly perfect work of art, paving the way for the 2026 AI-based Oscars.
20, Cookie.fun and rwa.xyz will become leading crypto data analysis platforms like CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, Dune, and DeFiLlama.
21, "Conventional" Meme coins have launched real mascots/spokespeople (or they are starting to fade away, but it has become irrelevant).
22, The crypto market is divided into "left-curve" crypto-native Degens and "mid-curve" TradFi traders who expect value accumulation in DeFi games.
23, As Bitcoin believers hope to use their BTC as collateral for lending, BTCFi will finally explode, driving the adoption of Bitcoin runes and inscriptions.
24, From now on, the competition between AGI and ASI will not slow down but accelerate, inevitably leading to existential anxiety for almost every knowledge worker on Earth. o3 now beats PhDs in specific domains, and it can outperform most programmers. And its ARC test scores are higher than the average person. Just as the ancients held the heliocentric view, we believe in the anthropocentric view, and the narratives in front of LLMs must change, as LLMs have already passed the Turing test and are showing a leading trend for the future.
25, As humans struggle to find meaning in this rapidly changing world, a powerful, AI-based religion not only caught people's attention but also brought some genuine converts. This may have already happened through Truth Terminal and GOAT, or temporarily treat these ideas as seeds of new meaning and direction concepts.
23 Tokens I'm Bullish On
After publishing crypto articles for five years, I can confidently say: "A year is too long to predict, but the following tokens are my current favorites. Ask me again in three months, and the list may be completely different." The reason these tokens can occupy the market and have high market caps is that they are exploring the frontiers of the future. Note: This is not financial advice! DYOR!
1, BTC, which has been the "commoner's game" for years. The discussion of Bitcoin strategic reserves has changed its fate. It has become the "king's game". BTC prices will rise until owning 1 BTC becomes the dream of most people.
2, Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL): Core infrastructure for AI agents on Base.
3, Ethena (ENA), TradFi understands yields better than any carbon-based lifeform on Earth, and as TradFi enters the crypto space, they will covet protocols that may generate even greater yields.
4, Tokenbot (CLANKER), an interesting token issuance platform for the decentralized social network Farcaster version of pump.fun.
5, aixbt (AIXBT), if I could only focus on one crypto alpha account on X, it might be AIXBT. Currently, it mostly mimics others' narratives, but it hasn't missed any content, and I hope AIXBT's insights will deepen and evolve over time.
6, Cookie DAO (COOKIE), Cookie.fun is an data analysis platform that emerged with the AI Agent boom, providing data and sentiment analysis for all AI tokens, which I believe will be attractive for crypto funds to be deployed in 2025 Q1.
7, Helium (HNT), a leading DePin project in the crypto industry. In the last day, over 349,000 people have used mobile phone service in the US.
8, Meta (META), a radical experiment in using futarchy to transform difficult decisions into markets.
9, Goatseus Maximus (GOAT), the first and original AI agent to gain a rabid following on social media, supported by Truth Terminal, with a background story that reads like a Hunter S. Thompson drug-fueled report.
10, Ondo Finance (ONDO), the representative project in the RWA field currently, oversupply may suppress the price trend, but I'd rather participate in the trade than opt out. Another RWA token worth watching is 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 crypto), and is digging deeper into the long-term relevance of each branch.
12, Bittensor (TAO) Bittensor calls itself the first "Neural Internet", providing a decentralized hub for AI projects to deploy code and compete for TAO. In some ways, I see it as a decentralized AI incubator and a testbed for the viability of AI ideas.
13, WZRD (Bitcoin Wizards Ordinals) and PUPS, one of my favorite Bitcoin ecosystem tokens, WZRD will soon transform into one of the greatest Memes of all time. Meanwhile, PUPS is the Schelling point of the famous BTC ecosystem NFT monkey puppets.
14, Aave (AAVE), if we assume that one day everything will be tokenized, then most of those assets will be eligible as collateral on the Aave platform. AAVE is one of the few tokens in crypto that I believe will ultimately reach a trillion-dollar market cap.
15, Arweave (AR), as the permanent data storage layer for Web 4, it is quietly advancing. Including most Solana NFTs, Arweave permanently stores around 6tb of data per month, and its upcoming AO should be an important catalyst for further growth.
16, Zerebro (ZEREBRO), a pioneering "on-chain AI artist" who can generate music, art, Memes, and NFTs.
17, Worldcoin (WLD). WLD was founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman, aiming to introduce "AI-funded UBI" to the world. I hate it and its iris scanner on one hand, but on the other hand, I can't ignore its connection to Altman and OpenAI, and its integration with OpenAI could make it one of the top 10 currencies overnight.
18, Drift Protocol (DRIFT), on-chain perps and prediction markets on Solana, Solana has performed well in spot Memecoin trading, and I expect it to also start generating significant perps trading volume over time.
19, Griffain (GRIFFAIN) and AI Rig Complex (ARC), competing for the "Virtuals of Solana" crown.
Conclusion
We are warned that "this time is different" is a dangerous phrase, believed only by fools caught in speculative frenzies. Yet, we easily forget the moments of technological transformation - when Gutenberg's printing press spread knowledge, when the Industrial Revolution pulled us from farms to cities, when the internet destroyed local businesses.
In other words, the phrase "this time is different" is somewhat correct. We are now on the edge of such a moment. The rules of society, traditions, and our view of ourselves will be rewritten. The process will be brutal and have consequences.
You can cling to the old ways, or you can be a pioneer of the age of change, let our light shine into the abyss, and accelerate the advance.
