Author: Lou Kerner, Co-founder of CryptoOracle Source: medium Translated by: Shan Ou Ba, Jinse Finance

As the crypto market enters 2025, there is an optimistic sentiment following the transformative year of 2024. Increased institutional adoption and the incoming new US government are expected to provide a more favorable regulatory environment, reigniting investor confidence. Against this backdrop, here are my three key predictions for the crypto industry in 2025:

The Best of Times: Optimistic Prediction

Prediction 1 - Bitcoin will surpass $1 million by 2031

In the short term, crypto market prices are heavily influenced by external factors, making price predictions for the next year very challenging. According to my prediction in January 2019, the price of Bitcoin at the end of 2018 was $3,742, which was far from the three most conservative forecasts at the time (when Bitcoin was priced at $14,156).

I initially set a 10-year price target in my post in January 2021. The $1 million prediction is based on two assumptions:

1. The gold market capitalization continues to grow at historical levels;

2. The Bitcoin market capitalization reaches the market capitalization of gold within 10 years.

Over the past four years, the growth in gold market capitalization has been nearly three times my assumption, while Bitcoin's share in the store of value market has been lower than expected. If these two trends continue, the $1 million target remains achievable.

It's worth noting that the above prediction is based solely on the "store of value" narrative for Bitcoin. I believe Bitcoin's unique properties may create tremendous value beyond just store of value, which is just the icing on the "extraordinary Bitcoin cake".

Prediction 2 - AI agents will become the mainstream narrative in 2025

AI agents are programs that autonomously execute tasks using artificial intelligence. They make decisions and take actions based on programming, data, and the environment. These tasks can be as simple as data entry, accounting, and customer service, or as complex as content generation or predictive modeling (e.g., investment or sales forecasting).

AI agents can interact with humans, other agents, or the environment to achieve specific goals. They are more efficient, accurate, and reliable than humans, and excellent AI agents can self-learn and improve through experience without human supervision.

There are already numerous AI frameworks that have spawned tens of thousands of AI agents.

The most representative framework is Virtuals Protocol, which grew over 80-fold in the fourth quarter. In the second episode of our webinar series "The Rise of AI Agents", three guests delved deep into Virtuals Protocol.

Crypto plays an indispensable role in the AI agent technology stack, providing a range of enhanced functionalities, including:

• Paying transaction fees - including transactions between agents;

• Providing a secure and transparent data management approach between AI agents and users;

• Trustless interactions - blockchain allows AI agents to conduct peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries.

All major tech companies are actively developing AI agent technologies. Last week, Google released a 42-page white paper simply titled "Agents".

And this is just the beginning.

The Worst of Times: Pessimistic Prediction

Despite the surge in crypto prices, the industry still faces many challenges. In particular, crypto assets outside of Bitcoin have not truly achieved mainstream adoption, and crypto remains overly complex. Although we have made progress in simplifying complexity, I believe the biggest challenge facing the crypto industry remains unresolved.

Prediction 3 - FAMGAN will continue to dominate technology value creation

Since I first wrote about it in January 2017, I have believed that the biggest risk facing technological innovation, including the crypto industry, is the unstoppable rise of tech giants. I refer to these giants as FAMGAN (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia).

Over the past decade, these companies have contributed 70% of the growth in the market capitalization of the tech sector. Although the crypto industry has added $35 trillion in market value over the past decade, the market cap growth of FAMGAN has exceeded $150 trillion.

They are all massive monopolistic enterprises (10 times the size of the entire crypto market) that are becoming more powerful every day. If they haven't already captured market share in your industry, it's only a matter of time.

Over the past eight years, I have written repeatedly about the threat of FAMGAN, most recently in my November 2024 article "The First Thing Trump Should Do: Help the Crypto Industry", and my concerns are gradually materializing in reality.

I feel that the broader crypto community is engaged in a Star Wars-level war with FAMGAN, a war for the soul of the metaverse, which will be driven by crypto and AI. We are battling FAMGAN and other tech oligarchs (e.g., Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, etc.). This war is akin to Star Wars, with FAMGAN as the Death Star and the crypto community as the Rebel Alliance.

Sadly, in most cases, the Death Star wins. But this war is worth fighting against the dystopian future driven by FAMGAN.