Cryptocurrency-driven accelerationism bubble

Original Title: "Crypto Enabled Accelerationism Bubble"

Author: yb_effect

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Over the past month, I have developed a habit of bookmarking any tweets related to AI agents that I come across while browsing X, so I can delve deeper into them later.

In the past two weeks, I couldn't help but notice that a large number of agent announcements are even unrelated to the metadata of Truth Terminal / Zerebro.

For example:

• Stripe released documentation on how to add payments to agent workflows.
• Balaji retweeted Aravind Srinivas's tweet, requesting the Perplexity browser to treat agents as first-class citizens.
• OtCo demonstrated an agent that created a limited liability company in Delaware based on its own needs.
• Circle published a detailed tutorial guiding developers on how to integrate USDC into various agents.
• Satya Nadella demonstrated Copilot Workspace just a few days ago, which is the first integrated development environment (IDE) for agents.

Well, you might be thinking… there's nothing special about this, right?

Of course, it's expected that these big tech companies are talking about agents. After all, who isn't talking about it?

But that's exactly my point—it's the first time it feels like the crypto consumer circle we are in is discussing the same things as other tech industries. The presentation may differ, but the core concepts certainly belong to the same category.

Of course, for the average person, crypto always feels strange. But even within the tech community, the crypto industry is often seen as that annoying "problem child." Frankly, this is not without reason! The various crazy news generated by this industry are truly unbelievable, and even many insiders have to admit that some trends are indeed "ridiculous."

At least in the short term, the previous meta-trends in the crypto industry had almost no intersection with other tech fields. For example, what does a top LLM engineer have to do with a 10K PFP project? And why would a scientist researching longevity care about new yield assets?

So far, the narratives in cryptocurrency have largely only attracted artists and quantitative investors.

But now it finally feels like there is an opportunity to break this cycle!

Clearly, we are still far from this point, but I personally do see a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.

Here are three topics worth discussing in depth:

1. Relaxed cryptocurrency regulation
2. Accelerationism bubble
3. Crypto-driven flagship cases

Let's explore these in detail.

Relaxed Cryptocurrency Regulation

This week, SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler announced he would resign on January 20. If you've spent even a week in the crypto space, you'll understand that this news is as significant as Harry Potter defeating Voldemort.

For the past four years, Gary Gensler has been the biggest "bottleneck" for the U.S. crypto industry.

Not only has he slowed down regulatory progress, but more importantly, he has actively worked to attack this emerging industry. Linda's tweet illustrates this—companies like Coinbase, Consensys, and countless others have had to spend hundreds of millions lobbying and fighting in Washington.

It seems that the potential candidates to succeed Gensler as SEC chair may take a completely opposite stance towards the crypto industry.

Whoever ultimately takes office, one thing is clear: the Trump administration has explicitly stated that they will work harder to embrace the crypto industry compared to the previous administration. To be honest, the bar isn't set very high.

In my election week article "Where Did Fairshake PAC's $133 Million Go?", I mentioned that Republican candidate Bernie Moreno received $40.1 million in donations in his Ohio Senate campaign, defeating Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown.

Ultimately, Moreno's victory is undoubtedly one of the significant wins for the entire crypto space. He has long been a supporter of cryptocurrency, while Brown has been a major obstacle to crypto regulation in the Senate.

Lastly, it's worth mentioning that just discussing the possibility of the U.S. establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve is already shocking! Three months ago, anyone bringing up this topic might have been considered dreaming. However, in the past few weeks, with the crypto market prices soaring and a surge in BlackRock ETF inflows, we have to seriously consider the realistic possibility of the federal government incorporating Bitcoin into its balance sheet.

Well, but how does this regulatory news relate to crypto technology crossing the chasm and entering broader tech adoption?

A key point is that developers from other tech fields have always had concerns about the uncertainty in the crypto industry. They worry that integrating this seemingly unstable technology into their careers could bring significant legal risks, such as lawsuits or fines, making crypto technology seem impractical to them.

However, as the new administration begins to embrace crypto technology and implement clear regulatory policies, this situation will change rapidly. Developers from other fields will gradually feel reassured and strategically explore the potential of crypto technology.

Vitalik summed it up well in the screenshot—it's the lack of regulatory clarity for serious projects that has hindered more developers from entering this space. Those who are not active in the crypto ecosystem may form their perceptions of the crypto industry through millionaire headlines like Moodeng and Bonk. This is not the best way to persuade a talented engineer from Anthropic to work in cryptocurrency, right?

Hopefully, in the next four years, politicians who support crypto technology will do their utmost to make it simple and safe for non-crypto people to adopt this technology.

Accelerationism Bubble

Last week, I read Packy's article "Trump Bubble," in which he suggested that the next four years will be a time of venture capital, visionary insight, and futurist optimism.

I should clarify that I don't completely agree with the views in the article—some parts feel overly excited and exaggerated. But Packy does raise some valuable points, indicating that there will be a shift in the atmosphere of how we think about progress. The future will feel faster, crazier, and more experimental.

As Byrne Hobart and Tobias Harris put it, this phenomenon is called the Turning Point Bubble.

Turning Point Bubble: "Investors believe the future will be substantially different from the past." You can think of it like the internet bubble. If you believe the future will differ from the past, you will invest in those things you think will benefit most from this difference.

I mention this because I believe that blockchain, rather than traditional venture capital, may become the financial pillar of the next turning point bubble.

In the spirit of the future of agents, I will let Truth Terminal explain why.

If you don't want to read the content below, here’s the takeaway you need to remember:

I'm not saying I believe that 90% of meme coins have succeeded—on the contrary, this format is still very new, and we won't see meme coins that can compete with what people traditionally consider "good investments" until we start seeing some genuinely clever token economics.

As the excitement in energy, artificial intelligence, biosciences, and gaming heats up, it may become the case that using AI agents combined with crypto tokens is more efficient and better for trying out new ideas than traditional methods.

Imagine this. If you are a nuclear engineering expert with decades of experience in the energy sector and want to realize a vision, you might spend months convincing venture capitalists to accept your idea, assemble a team, build a community, and so on.

But you could also do this:

1. Write a white paper detailing your background, papers, plans, vision, etc.
2. Deploy a "brand agent" on Twitter to help spread your ideas.
3. Raise initial funds through a token issuance.
4. Collaborate with agents to build a real fan community (i.e., social tipping).
5. Develop your team from this community, and you can also use bounty mechanisms to incentivize contributions.

I know what you're thinking right now! What I just described is simply the ICO craze of 2017. And I want to say, you are absolutely correct. But I think, perhaps, the ICO just came too early.

In my view, some changes, such as improved crypto infrastructure, a supportive regulatory environment for crypto, market maturation, institutional adoption, etc., are indeed meaningful!

That said, the framework mentioned earlier will certainly also generate thousands of meaningless projects. But how is this different from what venture capitalists have always said about "power laws"?

My perspective is that we have not yet seen truly high-execution founders from other tech fields genuinely trying to realize their visions through crypto-driven financing.

Not in 2017. And in 2024, there may be some early DePin and DeSci projects.

But as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, for the first time, it feels like there is some overlap between the focus of the crypto space and what other tech fields are concerned about.

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

I haven't delved deeply into pump.science, but I'm not surprised it has become one of the hottest topics in this field. There is no doubt that the speculation, legitimacy, and security issues surrounding it need to be addressed over time (I hope anyone in the crypto space would acknowledge this). But the key point to emphasize is that people are generally excited about the concept of crypto financing for non-crypto tasks.

The key insight is that the model of crowdfunding ideas has been validated since the early days of Kickstarter in the 2010s. Harnessing the wisdom and support of the crowd far outweighs closed-door meetings. People want to be involved!

However, perhaps it is precisely because the technology and social consensus required for this model need time to develop. And now, it seems a perfect storm is forming: positive political changes + the increasing maturity of crypto and AI technologies + the accelerationism bubble leading to a surge of ideas.

Yet, even so, I believe that for this concept to be taken seriously, something is still missing!

Crypto-Driven Flagship Cases

One of the coolest things about the recent on-chain AI and GOAT metadata is that it has "attracted" some AI/LLM developers into the crypto space.

I bet no one could have predicted this interview between Threadguy and Andy Ayery.

If you take a step back, it's really astonishing.

People like Nick Liverman (founder of Chaos), who have dedicated their entire careers to projects involving robotics, transhumanism, etc., may have earned more in the past month than in the last ten years!

Seeing Beff Jezos promoting his friend Shaw, who is building the ai16z and Eliza frameworks as a launch platform for agentic tokens, is also cool. The focus here is not on Beff, but on those deeply involved in the AI field, who are experimenting with on-chain AI through LLM developers and even gaining some background knowledge about the crypto space.

The key point I want to express is that in the coming year, we will see people from different tech verticals officially embrace crypto and demonstrate the efficiency of the agent + token model in building large-scale projects.

Once we see a few successful operational cases, others will be eager to try launching their own ideas; it's just a matter of time.

Currently, all the token issuances and experiments we see are small-scale.

It only takes a few success stories for others to flock in.

That's it for today's article. I know the past week has been crazy, but I still hope everyone has a chance to relax and connect with nature this weekend!