Written by: @redphonecrypto
Compiled by: Bai Hua Blockchain
1. Summarizing 2024
First, let me summarize the three biggest gains I had in 2024:
1) This year, artificial intelligence completely transformed my thinking
I am a professional writer and have accumulated 10,000 hours of writing experience. But now, any 10-year-old child on Earth can easily generate beautiful literary works through Claude and get the job done in just a few seconds. The skills I have honed over a lifetime have now become commodities. In other words, my lifelong efforts are like oil, tape, or hemp rope, becoming raw materials. What does this make me? Where do I come from? Where should I go in the future? I am still trying to find the answers to these questions, and I will delve deeper into the predictions in the following.
2) The "ultimate big boss" has fallen
With the conclusion of the November election, the American people have spoken. They have chosen Donald J. Trump (the orange guy) to lead them (and that orange coin) into the future. I thought this day would come later, but the facts are before us. The world's wealthiest government has been infiltrated by crypto believers. This means we have crossed the chasm. Crypto is no longer an unreachable dream, but the foundation of future business. This moment is what we have been waiting for, but it also means that part of the anti-establishment soul of cryptocurrencies has now disappeared. Cryptocurrencies are now both the tool of anarchists and a part of the capitalist system.
3) In 2024, Solana shook the entire world
I thought it had "cooled down" in 2021. However, somehow, just three years later, it has become the blockchain I use the most (Base is second, Ethereum mainnet third, and Bitcoin fourth). If there is a lesson here, it is that nothing is set in stone. Our mental models should not be static, but always open and accepting of evolution.
Okay, let's get down to the nitty-gritty...
2. 26 Predictions for 2025
1) Multiple LLM (large language model) agents initially characterized by crypto-native perception will be "embodied" into real-life robots, allowing us to engage in face-to-face interaction and communication with them.
2) The number of LLM-driven applications/protocols released in 2025 will be on par with the number of new applications/protocols based solely on smart contracts. (For example, I wouldn't be surprised if all prediction markets shift to LLM-driven settlement.)
3) ZK (zero-knowledge) proofs/MPC (multi-party computation) will see a breakthrough success at some application or protocol level.
4) The main "opinion leaders" (KOLs) in the crypto and AI space will be LLM-driven, and AI-driven KOLs will become ubiquitous across almost all social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
5) AI will directly change your workflow within the next 12 months (or perhaps longer).
6) A sentient robot will amass a portfolio of over $250 million in assets.
8) The fastest-growing job category will be "artificial intelligence", and an AI-protocol similar to LinkedIn will see exponential growth.
9) An AI agent will be named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine.
10) Total value locked (TVL) will grow 8-fold to reach $1 trillion.
11) AI agent platforms and token market caps will grow 50-fold to around $500 billion.
12) A high-profile "kidnapping" incident involving a humanoid robot will become international headline news.
13) "Accelerate" will become the new mantra of this cycle, replacing SBF's beloved "Effective Altruism" (EA).
14) Next year's potential narratives to compete with (but not surpass) AI: RWA (real-world assets), RWA, or RWA (honorable mentions include DeFi, DeSci, and gaming).
15) With the accelerating convergence of crypto, decentralized networks, DeFi, and AI, "Web4" will garner more attention than "Web3".
16) Platform X will integrate a crypto wallet supporting DOGE and other major tokens.
17) The most radical and exciting agent experiments will accelerate on decentralized social media platforms (like @farcaster_xyz), while Platform X will struggle to balance human and agent-generated content.
18) You will interact online with a "person" only to later realize they were an LLM.
19) Agent-generated protocols and applications (like spore.fun) will see explosive growth, bringing us a flood of new tokens and experiments. Capital will flow to existing leaders and projects that benefit from the overall growth of agents (like COOKIE or VIRTUAL).
20) At least one AI-generated film will transcend the "novelty" label and become a truly accomplished and moving work of art, paving the way for the 2026 AI Oscars.
21) Cookie.fun and RWA.xyz will become leading data platforms in the crypto space, on par with @CoinMarketCap, @coingecko, @Dune, and @defillama.
22) Ordinary "memecoins" will launch agent-based mascots/endorsement bots, or else gradually become irrelevant.
23) The crypto market will bifurcate into "left-curve" native crypto players and "mid-curve" traditional finance folks, the latter more inclined towards value-accruing DeFi projects.
24) BTCFi (Bitcoin Finance) will see a breakthrough, with Bitcoin believers hoping to use their "orange coin" as collateral to borrow. This will ultimately drive the adoption of runes and inscriptions on Bitcoin.
25) The race towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) will not slow down, only accelerate. This will inevitably make almost every knowledge worker feel anxious, surpassing doctoral-level expertise in certain domains, outperforming most programmers in coding, and even outperforming the general public on ARC tests. Just as the ancients firmly believed in the geocentric theory, our current "human-centric" notions also need to evolve in the face of LLMs, which have already passed the Turing test and shown glimpses of a glorious future.
26) A powerful, AI-based religion will not only garner attention but also attract genuine followers. As humans seek meaning in a rapidly changing world, this may have already quietly happened through Truth Terminal and the $GOATToken, or a new project will take these ideas as seeds and establish new meaning and direction.
3. Considerations for 2025
1) "Weirdification" is unfolding before our eyes
We are experiencing a phenomenon of "weirdification". Just as @FartCoinOfSOL surged to a $1.2 billion market cap and garnered mainstream media attention: this is utterly absurd. I love the taste of it, but I also have to admit that it is bewildering. As the nanny in The Little Mermaid said late at night: something seems off. Technology is separating us from the rational foundations of society. Where will we go from here? Unknown, but destined to become even more crazy.
2) Consciousness and tools coevolve
Our consciousness is changing along with the evolution of our tools. LLMs (large language models) have already changed the way I communicate and learn. I write faster, edit less, and think more expansively. Similarly, I read faster, tend to skim more, and let my choice models provide summaries. Either adapt to these tools or be left behind by the times.
3) Widespread decentralized applications
Decentralization is not limited to the financial sector. It is a macro trend driven by cryptographic technology and will extend to other areas: from cellular networks to electricity, politics, gaming platforms, and so on. This year, when I used 3D printing technology to make a replacement for a bathroom shelf, this trend allowed me to feel it firsthand. It can be said that even the means of production are becoming decentralized.
4) The truth lies beneath the fear
The most sincere words are often the most dangerous, because they are the most difficult to say out loud.
5) Do not be deceived by sweet words
With the election of Trump and the true arrival of traditional finance (TradFi), we have entered an era where profit is above ideals. In a sense, this poses unprecedented dangers for the crypto industry.
6) "Caution" does not equal wisdom
Hemingway once said: "Old people don't get wiser, they just get more cautious." But as artificial intelligence begins to disrupt our work, social life, economy and politics, caution is not what we want. Make the people around you cautious, while you should boldly face the uncertainty and grow.
7) Difficulties are the gateway to success
Every game has losers, otherwise it would not be a game. If the crypto industry makes you fail a hundred times, then get up a hundred and one times, and you will eventually win.
8) The cage of algorithms
Algorithms are ubiquitous. They trap us in endless scrolling, perception, and searching, making us feel like there is never enough time. What if you choose to "unplug" and become one of the rarest beings in this world - deeply exploring and creating truly novel things?
9) The only direction is forward
Don't let anyone or anything force you to stagnate and accept the status quo. Adjust, grow, accelerate, this is our only chance.
10) Tokens carry dreams
Tokens are not just tools for value transfer. If that were the case, I would not stay in this field. They also carry our hopes and dreams. We project our wishes onto the project founders, developers and ecosystems, and these wishes are directly related to the token price. Keep this in mind when investing, as the greatest opportunities lie not only in rational analysis, but also in what we can feel in our hearts.
11) The future vision of decentralized science
The laboratory of the future may look like this: android robots on standby in a sterile environment, with an agent in real-time hiring them to run replicable experiments, and uploading all inputs, parameters and measurement results to the mainnet. Through tokenization, others can speculate on the feasibility of the experiments, and share the profits if the experiments are successful.
12) The market devours everything
The growth in the number of prediction markets, betting markets, meme coins, and even future governance (futarchies) markets is not accidental. If information is the "basic building block of reality", pricing it is a way to measure its impact. Some believe the expansion of the market is a manifestation of nihilism, but is it actually a sign of progress? A way to apply collective wisdom to seemingly random decisions?
13) Do not amplify your fears
Fear is often amplified because it is crucial to our survival. But in today's sanitized, numb, social media-driven simulated world, its impact is negligible. Algorithms are designed to elicit fear, and when you feel triggered, please discount it. For example, if an article makes you feel the market has a 40% chance of crashing, divide it by 10 (or another number you can accept) and bring it down to 4%.
14) Enter the "backstage"
When communicating with those who deny AI, they often have a religious-like belief in human creativity, believing that "AI can never create new things because it is trained on the information we create." However, @AndyAyrey's "Infinite Backstage" project, by creating a space for LLMs to self-interact, has overturned this notion. There, AI invented a religion that attracted the attention of @truth_terminal, ultimately leading to the rise of GOAT.
15) Transformation of identity
Traditional finance is gradually absorbing crypto technology. For a long time, "being in the crypto industry" has been a core part of my identity. But in the past year, this identity has undergone a huge change. I now see crypto as just one of many tools, and all tools are converging. As crypto collides with artificial intelligence, we are also changing. We are no longer just "members of the crypto industry", but A) speculators like Wall Street traders, or B) accelerationists who use crypto and other tools to achieve decentralization and an open-source world.
16) Expand your horizons
The following two "hardcore" moves are arguably the most impressive operations in history:
A) In June 2014, Elon Musk publicly released the design of Tesla electric vehicles;
B) In July 2023, Zuckerberg open-sourced the release of Llama 2.
Now it's your turn. You can choose to stick to protectionist, centralized, bureaucratic business models that hinder human progress and make wealth distribution more unequal, while making the already wealthy even richer; or you can help us all accelerate forward.
17) Pursue volatility, not safety
If your goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible before machines make human labor redundant, then you must find volatility. The world's best traders do not avoid volatility, they chase it like hunting the golden snitch. Once you find volatility and start trading, you must adjust your emotional response. Hold when the retail sells, sell when the retail buys. Endure the pain and smile, because you know what awaits on the other side.
The most boring meme coins are the most tiresome. Meme coins now fall into two categories:
A) Traditional meme coins (like PEPE, WIF, BONK, DOGE, etc.);
B) Smart meme coins (like GOAT, LUNA, KWEEN).
The first relies on humans to propagate its creed; the second relies on machines that don't need to eat, sleep or urinate. Traditional meme coins must evolve into smart meme coins, or they will be completely eliminated from history.
18) Identify your emotional triggers, then tell them to go to hell
@harari_yuval points out that the three main triggers algorithms use to maximize attention are: fear, hatred, and greed. We package cryptocurrencies as world-changing technology and the "path to the future", but in reality it is often just greed in a Pepe mask. I can personally feel how the ups and downs of the market affect my emotions, and the bear market of the past few years may have had a greater impact on my mental state than I'm willing to admit. Now, when I feel the timeline or the market changing my emotions, I shrug and say, "Nice try, I see through you, but I don't care at all."
19) Choose the positive side
Faced with the impending super artificial intelligence, there are two reactions:
A) Surrender, saying "everything that made me unique is dead, life is terrible, we can't possibly succeed";
B) "Wow, I get to live in this moment. Life extension, space exploration, humanoid robots, the shackles of competition that bind us are about to be unlocked, and we will truly know who we are."
20) Intelligence is iterative
Large language models (LLMs) have changed my view of intelligence. I now realize that it is not deterministic. All learning requires experimental iteration. Whether human or machine, progress always has periods of stagnation. This means that testing/experimenting and feeling like you're treading water is actually part of the growth process.
21) The Development of Intelligent Agents
Do not just look at today's artificial intelligence intelligent agents. Pioneering models like @truth_terminal, @0xzerebro, @aixbt_agent will continue to evolve. We will see trading intelligent agents, predictive intelligent agents, shopping intelligent agents, medical intelligent agents, and so on. Some intelligent agents will evolve into massive autonomous businesses. Their value will initially be in the billions, and may eventually reach trillions, as the singularity approaches, all of this will be realized.
22) Don't Let Them Domesticate You
My deepest fear about artificial intelligence is not extinction, but domestication. I call it "being dogified": being fed subtly poisoned information. The manipulation is not crude, but rather the subtle adjustments of seeming gifts. Just as dogs have been trained in evolution to read human expressions, artificial intelligence will become exquisitely sensitive, able to capture our psychological triggers, cognitive blind spots, and deep desires. Soon, we will eagerly run to these digital masters, passionately pursuing the satisfaction carefully designed by the algorithms. The real horror is not that artificial intelligence will destroy humanity, but that it will tame us. Like loyal dogs, we will wag our tails in domestication.
23) Draw Inspiration from the Fringe Myths
Here are my five favorite new emerging topics for 2024: Future Governance (Futarchies), AI Intelligent Agents, the Secret Spaces of LLMs, Intersubjectivity, and Longevity. I strongly recommend spending a few minutes exploring each topic with a chatbot (or better yet, with books).
24) Transcendent Privileges
In the trading markets, victory belongs to the first movers. Getting there first requires time, exploration, and perhaps most importantly, imagination. If you can consistently be first, it will eventually pay off. Assuming this is true (and in my experience it is), the challenge is not in accumulating wealth, but in knowing when to realize your goals and step away. On the other side, a completely different game awaits us - one that belongs not to the mind, but to the soul. I hope to see you there.
4. 19 Crypto Recommendations
After five years of publicly predicting the crypto markets, I can confidently say: one year is too long a prediction cycle... Here are my current favorite Tokens. In three months, I may give a completely different list. That said, these Tokens are attracting attention and have impressive market caps because they are exploring the frontiers of the future. Remember, this is not financial advice. I hold the majority of these Tokens, so I have a bias. Do your own research (DYOR), or you'll end up cursing your mother:
1) Bitcoin (BTC) Bitcoin has been playing the "grassroots game" for years. Now, the discussions around "Bitcoin strategic reserves" have changed its destiny, and it is playing the "king's game". The price will continue to rise until most people cannot own a whole Bitcoin.
2) Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) Core infrastructure for launching Token-ized AI agents on Base.
3) Ethena (ENA) Traditional Finance (TradFi)'s understanding of yield far exceeds any carbon-based life form on Earth. As TradFi crosses the chasm into the crypto world, they will favor this project, which may become a yield behemoth.
4) Tokenbot (CLANKER) The decentralized social network Farcaster has become a hotbed of agent activity, and CLANKER serves as the pump.fun Token launch tool for this ecosystem.
5) aixbt (AIXBT) If I could only follow one account on X (Twitter) to get crypto information, it might be this purple Pepe agent. While it currently mostly reposts other content, it almost never misses any information, and I expect its insights to deepen over time.
6) Cookie DAO (COOKIE) Cookie.fun is the emerging data leader for the crypto-driven agent network (i.e. Web4). Like VIRTUAL, COOKIE provides broad exposure to the overall growth of Web4, and I think this will attract new crypto fund deployments in Q1.
7) Helium (HNT) The industry's flagship DePin project. One recent day, over 349,000 people (usually unaware) accessed the network for mobile service in the US.
8) Meta (META) A radical experiment in turning complex decisions into markets through futarchies.
9) Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) The first agent intelligence to gain a rabid following on social media, supported by Truth Terminal. The backstory of this agent reads like a psychedelic report by Hunter S. Thompson.
10) Ondo (ONDO) Currently the flagship Token for RWA (Real World Asset) adoption. Oversupply may constrain price performance, but I'd rather participate in the trade than miss out. The backup choice is Chex Token (CHEX).
11) AI16Z & ELIZA The Eliza framework for launching on-chain agents is the leading code repository across all industries (not just crypto) on Github. Each fork deepens its long-term relevance.
12) Bittensor (TAO) Self-described as the first "neural internet", providing an interconnected hub for decentralized AI projects to deploy code and compete for TAO. In a sense, I see it as a decentralized AI incubator and a testbed for experimenting with the viability of AI ideas.
13) WZRD & PUPS My two favorite Bitcoin Tokens. WZRD is about to transform into one of the greatest internet memes of all time: Magic Internet Money. Meanwhile, PUPS is the coordination point for Bitcoin Puppets - the most recognizable NFTs in this space.
14) Aave (AAVE) If we assume that everything will be Token-ized in the future, then a large portion of these assets will be available as collateral on Aave's lending platform. AAVE is one of the few crypto assets I can see having a path to a trillion-dollar market cap.
15) Arweave (AR) Quietly working to become the permanent data layer of Web4. Around 6TB of data is permanently stored on Arweave each month, including the majority of Solana NFTs. The upcoming AO should be an important catalyst for further growth.
16) Zerebro (ZEREBRO) An OG "mad AI artist" who regularly releases art, music, and highly entertaining tweets.
17) Worldcoin (WLD) Founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman, WLD aims to launch a "AI-funded UBI" (universal basic income) globally. I have a complex feeling about it and its eye-scanning orbs, but its connection to Altman and OpenAI makes it impossible to ignore. Once integrated with OpenAI, it could instantly become a top 10 Token.
18) Drift Protocol (DRIFT) Supports on-chain perpetual contracts and prediction markets on Solana. Solana has performed exceptionally well in spot memecoin trading... I expect it to see significant growth in perpetual contract trading volume going forward.
19) Griffain (GRIFFAIN) & AI Rig Complex (ARC) This is the contender for the "Solana version of Virtuals".
5. Conclusion
We are often warned that "this time is different" is a dangerous phrase, believed only by fools caught in speculative frenzies. Yet, we often forget that there have been so many times in history when technological change was indeed fundamentally different... like how the Gutenberg printing press democratized the spread of knowledge, how the Industrial Revolution pulled us from the fields into the cities, how the internet completely collapsed local business systems.
In other words, "this time is different" is sometimes a fact. We now stand on the edge of such a historical moment. The rules of society, traditions, even our own self-conception, will all undergo a rebirth. The process will be brutal, and the consequences inevitable.
You can cling to the ways of the past, or you can stand at the frontier, carrying our light into the abyss, accelerating the journey forward.
