The accelerationist bubble spawned by cryptocurrency

Author: YB, Crypto KOL

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Over the past month, a large number of tweets related to AI agents have been collected for future in-depth research. In the last two weeks, numerous agent announcements have even been unrelated to Truth Terminal / Zerebro. For example, Stripe released documentation on adding payments to agent workflows; Circle published an in-depth tutorial for developers on how to integrate USDC with various agents, etc.

You might be thinking… isn't this nothing special?

Of course, these big tech companies are talking about agents. But who isn't?

For the first time, it feels like the crypto bubble is discussing the same things as other tech industries. Perhaps the style is different, but the narrative is certainly the same.

Of course, for the average person, cryptocurrency always feels strange. But even in the tech world, cryptocurrency is viewed as a distasteful industry. This is understandable. The sheer number of crazy headlines generated by the crypto industry is simply unbelievable, and even most crypto enthusiasts believe that some trends are just nonsense.

The crypto industry has little overlap with other tech verticals, at least in the short term. So far, the narrative around cryptocurrency has mostly attracted artists and quantitative analysts. But it feels like there is an opportunity to break this situation.

Let's delve into three themes:

• Relaxed cryptocurrency regulation
• Accelerationist bubble
• Crypto-driven success stories

Relaxed Cryptocurrency Regulation

SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler announced he will resign on January 20. The significance of this news is comparable to Harry Potter defeating Voldemort.

For the past four years, Gensler has been the biggest bottleneck in the development of the U.S. crypto industry.

This is not only because Gensler has imposed strict regulations but more importantly, he has attacked this emerging industry. Linda's tweet aptly illustrates this: Coinbase, Consensys, and countless other companies have been forced to spend hundreds of millions lobbying and fighting in Washington.

The following image shows that this potential candidate is making a 180-degree turn.

SEC Chair candidate Teresa Goody Guillén stated, "Make cryptocurrency great again."

Whoever succeeds Gensler as SEC Chair, one thing is clear: Trump is determined to embrace cryptocurrency better than the previous administration. To be honest, the threshold isn't that high.

Previously mentioned Bernie Moreno (Republican) received $40.1 million in donations, defeating Sherrod Brown (Democrat) in the Ohio Senate race.

Moreno's victory is objectively one of the biggest wins for the entire crypto space. He is a long-time crypto enthusiast, while Brown has been a significant obstacle to crypto regulation in the Senate.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the discussions surrounding a potential U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve are crazy. In recent weeks, the momentum for cryptocurrency has changed significantly, with rising prices, BlackRock ETF inflows, etc., and one must now seriously consider the fact that there may be Bitcoin on the federal government's balance sheet.

Okay, but what does this regulatory news have to do with cryptocurrency crossing the chasm into broader tech adoption?

One of the main concerns for builders in other tech verticals is whether cryptocurrency is a reliable technology in the U.S. Due to reasonable concerns about potential legal risks such as lawsuits and fines, the idea of combining this unstable technology with their lifelong work seems unrealistic.

However, as this new government begins to embrace cryptocurrency and implement clear regulations, others will soon explore cryptocurrency.

Vitalik summarizes this well in this screenshot—it's precisely because of the lack of regulatory clarity that builders cannot adopt this technology. Those not actively involved in ecosystem building may form their views on cryptocurrency based on the embarrassing headlines of Moodeng and Bonk millionaires. This is not the best way to persuade the genius engineers at Anthropic to use cryptocurrency, right?

Hopefully, in the next four years, politicians who support cryptocurrency will do their utmost to enable those outside the crypto space to adopt this technology simply and safely.

Accelerationist Bubble

Packy points out in his article "Trump Bubble" that the next four years will be a golden age of risk-taking, vision, and optimism.

The author does not completely agree with the latter half of this article, feeling it is a bit too excited and exaggerated. However, Packy raises some valid points that perceptions of progress are changing. Things will become more efficient, crazier, and more experimental.

This phenomenon, as Byrne Hobart and Tobias Harris call it, is referred to as the inflection point bubble.

• Inflection Point Bubble: "Investors believe the future will be radically different from the past." Think of the dot-com bubble. If you believe significant changes will occur in the future, you will buy those stocks that you think will benefit the most from this difference.

The reason for bringing this up is that cryptocurrency (rather than traditional venture capital) will become the financial pillar of the next inflection point bubble. Truth Terminal provides a good explanation:

It's not that 90% of memecoins are ready for success—on the contrary, this form is still immature, and only when some good designs emerge in certain token economics will it be recognized that memecoins can rival what people traditionally consider "good investments."

With the development of energy, artificial intelligence, biosciences, and gaming verticals, the combination of AI agents + crypto tokens may increase efficiency in trying new ideas by tenfold.

Suppose you are a seasoned nuclear engineer who has worked in the energy sector for decades and want to try to build your vision. You might spend months convincing venture capitalists to accept your idea, form a team, build a community, etc.

Or you could:

• Write a white paper detailing your background, thesis, plans, vision, etc.
• Deploy a "brand agent" on Twitter to help spread the word
• Raise initial funds through a token issuance
• Collaborate with agents to build a real fan community (i.e., social tipping)
• Develop your team from this community, possibly using bounties

This is reminiscent of the ICO frenzy of 2017. But ICOs might be a bit premature for the current moment.

In the author's view, changes such as improving crypto infrastructure, supporting regulatory environments for crypto, market maturity, and institutional adoption are actually very important.

That said, the aforementioned framework will undoubtedly still produce thousands of completely meaningless projects. But how is this different from the power laws that VCs always chatter about?

The author's perspective is that there are currently no orthodox senior institutional builders from other vertical tech fields intentionally trying to realize their visions through supporting crypto financing.

Absolutely not in 2017. In 2024, we might see some early DePin & DeSci projects.

However, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, for the first time, it feels like there is some overlap between the crypto narrative and the narratives that others in the tech world care about.

Not just agents, but even topics like bioscience research, GPU allocation, etc.

While Pump.science has not been studied in detail yet, it is not surprising that it has become one of the hottest topics in this field. There are certainly some crazy speculations, legitimacy, and security issues that need to be sorted out over time (hopefully, people in the crypto industry can acknowledge this). But it is important to emphasize that there is a general excitement about the concept of crypto financing for non-crypto tasks.

The key point here is that the crowdfunding model has been validated since the inception of Kickstarter in the 2010s. In any case, having the wisdom and support of the crowd outweighs a closed-door board. People want to get involved.

But in reality, the technology and social consensus around this model may take time to form. It seems a perfect storm is gathering: positive changes in political management + the increasing maturity of crypto and AI technologies + the accelerationist bubble generating a plethora of ideas.

Even so, one thing is still missing for this concept to gain real attention.

Crypto-Driven Success Stories

One of the coolest things about on-chain AI and Goat metadata recently is "attracting" some AI/LLM developers into the crypto space.

No one could have predicted the interview between Threadguy and Andy Ayery.

If you take a step back, it really is magical.

Some people, like Nick Liverman (founder of Chaos), have spent their entire careers on projects like robotics and transhumanism, and the money they have made in the past month might surpass what they earned in the last decade.

Beff Jezos is promoting his friend Shaw, who is building the ai16z and Eliza frameworks as a launching platform for agentic tokens. The focus here is not on Beff but rather on the fact that through LLM developers experimenting with on-chain AI, deep insiders in the AI field are even aware of the developments in cryptocurrency.

The key point to emphasize here is that next year will see some individuals from different tech fields correctly embrace crypto and demonstrate the efficiency of the agent + token model in building large projects.

Once we see some successful cases, it will only be a matter of time before others are eager to throw out their ideas.

All the token issuances and experiments we see now are "small potatoes."

Just a few successful cases can attract a large number of followers.