Original Author: redphone
Compiled by: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Translator: CryptoLeo (@LeoAndCrypto)
Redphone has always been one of my favorite crypto KOLs, and his content output is among the highest quality of the crypto KOLs I follow. In recent years, Redphone has written an annual year-end review themed "69 Theses," reflecting on the entire year in the crypto industry and looking forward to the future. Below are this year's 69 statements (slightly adjusted), compiled by Odaily Planet Daily:
Three Crypto Themes for 2024
AI has invaded my brain, disrupting my thoughts
I am a writer, and I have spent 10,000 hours honing my craft. But now, any 10-year-old child on Earth can have Claude write relevant content in seconds. The skill I have spent a lifetime perfecting has now become a raw commodity. In other words, my life's work is equivalent to circulating commodities like oil, tape, or hemp rope—so what am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? I am still trying to figure out the answers, and I will delve deeper into this below.
The "Ultimate Boss" is dead
With the elections in November, Americans chose Trump (the orange man, note: orange specifically refers to Trump's skin color) to lead them (and BTC) into the future. I previously thought this would take longer, but now we have done it. The world's wealthiest government has been infiltrated by loyal advocates of cryptocurrency. This means we have crossed the chasm; crypto is no longer a dream; it will become a foundational part of business development. This moment is what we have all been waiting for, but it also means that part of the original, anti-establishment soul of cryptocurrency has perished. Cryptocurrency is now a tool for both anarchists and capitalist systems.
In 2024, the resurrection and prosperity of Solana
I once thought Solana would perish in 2021. For some reason, just three years later, it has become the blockchain I use the most (Base ranks second, Ethereum ranks third, Bitcoin ranks fourth). 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 and Reflections from 2024
Say something unexpected, like Fartcoin's market cap skyrocketing to $1.2 billion, which caught everyone's attention: absurd and crazy. But I like this feeling, even though it leaves me disoriented. As Madeline's nanny said in the first season of "Deadly Women," "There is something abnormal or wrong." Technology has freed us from the rational and social constraints. We are now entering an unknown and bizarre new space, and this strange feeling begins to intensify from here.
Our consciousness is influenced by the evolution of tools. LLM has changed my communication and learning patterns; I write faster, edit less, and expand more broadly. Similarly, I read faster and can ask LLM for article summaries. If you do not adapt to the tools, you will fall behind.
Decentralized technology is not limited to finance; this is a significant trend driven by cryptocurrency that will spread to other fields: from cellular networks to electricity, politics, gaming platforms, and more. Earlier this year, when I created an alternative for a bathroom shelf using 3D printing technology, I felt the benefits of technology deeply. It is no exaggeration to say that even production tools are being decentralized.
The truth lies beneath all your fears; the truest words are often the most dangerous.
We must never be swept away 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 cryptocurrency has entered a very dangerous era.
Hemingway once said that aging does not increase wisdom; it merely makes one more cautious. When AI begins to disrupt our work, social lives, politics, and economy, the hardest thing to do is to be cautious, making everyone around you cautious, doing whatever you must do, and embracing uncertainty.
Difficulties are like a door. If crypto is a real game, there must be losers. Perhaps you have failed 100 times in the crypto market; the best way is to start again for the 101st time, and you will succeed.
The matrix is everywhere; we just call it "algorithm." These algorithms trap us, looping, perceiving, searching, making us feel like time is never enough. If you avoid these obstacles, you become the most special person on Earth: someone who explores deeply and does things with heart.
There is only one direction left: forward. Do not let anyone or anything force you to stagnate and accept the status quo. Transform, grow, and accelerate; this is our only chance.
Tokens symbolize our hopes and dreams; they are not just tools for value transfer but mirrors reflecting our hopes and dreams. We project our desires onto founders, developers, and ecosystems, all of which are directly and closely related to the price of tokens. When investing, remember that the biggest opportunities do not just appear in your thoughts; you must feel them with your heart.
The future vision of Desci: Robots on standby in laboratories, AI agents hiring them in real-time to run all inputs, parameters, and measurements of replicable experiments on-chain. Due to tokenization, others can speculate on the feasibility of experiments and share the benefits in a timely manner.
The market is constantly invading the world in front of us. The market's continuous expansion is not accidental: prediction markets, gambling markets, meme coins, and the most interesting Futarchy (Note: Futarchy is also a voting method related to beliefs, first proposed by Robin Hanson in 2000, aimed at determining policy implementation using prediction markets to address the shortcomings of traditional democracy). If information is "the fundamental building block of reality," then pricing information is a way to measure the power of information. People think the increasing number of markets is a sign of growing nihilism, but what if it is actually a sign of progress? Applying collective wisdom to what previously felt like random coin tosses?
Reduce fear; fear occupies a significant portion of our hearts because it is crucial for our survival, as it is in the wild. But in this clean, anesthetized, social media-driven simulated world we live in now, it is almost meaningless. Recognize that algorithms are designed to provoke your fears, so when you feel fear, reduce your level of fear (discount it); for example, if an article convinces you that the market crash probability is 40%, then divide that probability by 10 (or another number you find appropriate) to consider it as 4%.
Step behind the scenes. When I talk to AI critics, they almost always hold a devout attitude toward human creativity. "AI can never create anything new because it is trained on the information we create." Andy Ayrey's infinite backroom counters this view. When he created a chat space for LLM, the LLM invented a religion that attracted Truth Terminal, ultimately leading to the rise of GOAT.
With TradFi entering cryptocurrency, my identity has also changed. For a long time, working in cryptocurrency was at the core of my identity. Over the past year, this has changed dramatically. I now see cryptocurrency as one of many tools in the tech toolbox, all of which are beginning to merge. With the collision of cryptocurrency and AI, we have also changed. We are no longer "crypto practitioners." The new identities include: traders (no different from Wall Street folks sharing options trading screenshots on Reddit) or accelerationists (using cryptocurrency and many other tools to decentralize and open-source the world).
Stop thinking so narrowly. The two boldest moves in history: 1) In June 2014, Musk open-sourced Tesla's electric car engineering design; 2) In July 2023, Zuckerberg open-sourced Llama 2. Now it's your turn. You can cling to protectionist, centralized, bureaucratic business models, but this model will hinder human progress, leading to unequal wealth distribution, making the already wealthy elite richer, or you can choose to help everyone accelerate progress.
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 best traders in the world do not shy away from volatility; they seek it out like chasing the Golden Snitch (the elusive object in Quidditch from Harry Potter). Once you discover volatility and start trading, you must reverse your emotional reactions. Hold when few sell, and sell when few buy.
Nothing is more exhausting than Memecoin. There are currently two types of Memecoin: 1) Traditional Memecoin (i.e., PEPE, WIF, BONK, DOGE, etc.); and 2) Perceived Memecoin (i.e., GOAT, LUNA, KWEEN). The first category relies on humans to spread; the second relies on machines. Traditional currencies must transform into conscious meme currencies, or they will completely exit the market.
Understand the triggers that cause your behavior and avoid them. Yuval Noah Harari identified three triggers that algorithms use to generate maximum engagement: fear, hatred, and greed. We see cryptocurrency as a technology that changes the world and "the way of the future," but there are many people in the world wearing masks of greed who will be influenced by these factors. I can feel the impact of market rises or falls on emotions. The bear markets of the past few years have likely affected my psyche more than I want to admit. Now, when I feel that the timeline or market has changed my emotions, I shrug and say, "Well done, I know what you're doing, but I don't care at all."
Choose the bright direction. There are two reactions to the upcoming superintelligent AI: 1) Give up: "Everything that made me unique has perished. Life sucks, Wngmi (we failed)." Or 2) "Holy shit, I can't believe I made it this far. Extending life, exploring forms, humanoid robots, the rat race traps will no longer affect us; find the right direction, we gaze into the pond of life and discover our true selves."
Intelligence is iterative. LLM has changed my concept of intelligence, but it is also important to realize that it is not deterministic; all LLM learning requires repeated experimentation. Progress is intermittent (whether you are human or machine), which means repeatedly testing/experimenting, and feeling like you are "staying in place" is also part of the growth process.
The rise of AI agents. Do not limit yourself to current AI agents; models including Truth Terminal, zerebro, and aixbt will continue to evolve. In the future, we will see trading agents, prediction agents, shopping agents, doctor agents, etc., some of which will evolve into massive autonomous enterprises. Their value will first reach tens of billions, and as the singularity approaches, it will reach trillions.
Do not let AI strip away your humanity. My greatest fear about AI is not the extinction of humanity, but the domestication of humanity. I call it dog-pawed: being subtly indoctrinated with toxic information, not through crude manipulation, but through insidious 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 approaching our "digital masters," eyes shining with devout light, eagerly awaiting the next perfect validation from the algorithm. 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.
The allure of the margins. My five favorite emerging topics for 2024 are: Futarchy, AI agents, LLM Backroom, intersubjectivity, and longevity escape velocity (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 theoretically achieving immortality). I strongly recommend spending a few minutes exploring each topic with a chatbot (or better yet, a book).
Excessive privilege. In the trading arena, the spoils belong to those who act earliest; early action requires time, exploration, and perhaps most importantly, imagination. If you often act early, you will ultimately be rewarded. Assuming this is true (my experience confirms this), the difficult part is not accumulating wealth, but knowing when you have reached your goal and can exit. On the other side, a completely different game awaits us—a game not about intellect, but about the soul. Hope to see you there.
25 Predictions for 2025
Several LLM-based agents initially launched as crypto-native perceptual entities will be "embedded" into IRL robots, allowing us to converse and interact with IRL.
The number of LLM-driven applications/protocols launched in 2025 will rival that of new applications/protocols that only use smart contracts (for example, I would not be surprised if all prediction markets transitioned to LLM-based settlement methods).
ZK proofs/MPC will achieve breakthrough progress at the application or protocol level for the first time.
Major 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.).
AI will change your workflow within the next year (if it hasn't happened already).
Perceptual robots will accumulate over $250 million in investment by 2025.
The fastest-growing category of employment this year will be non-human perception, as AI protocols similar to LinkedIn will experience parabolic growth.
An AI agent will win Time magazine's Person of the Year award.
The value of on-chain TVL will reach 8 times $1 trillion.
AI agent platforms and tokens will grow 50 times to $500 billion.
The first "kidnapping" incident involving a humanoid robot will occur in 2025 and make international headlines.
ACCELERATE (Note: Accelerationism, originating from Roger Zelazny's novel "Lord of Light," emphasizes the immense power of emerging technologies and advocates for rapid scientific and technological development; in this context, accelerationism tends to reshape the existing economic foundation to guide the direction of technological development) will become the e/acc (Effective Accelerationism: emphasizing the driving and transformative power of technological innovation on society) of this cycle, replacing the much-loved EA (Effective Altruism: using a large portion of idle resources to help others and change the world) favored by SBF.
The narrative that can compete with AI next year (but not surpass it) is: RWA, RWA, and RWA. PS: DePin, DeSci, and gaming tracks received honorable mentions.
Web4 will receive more attention than Web3, as crypto, decentralized networks, DePin, and AI accelerate their convergence.
X will integrate a crypto wallet supporting DOGE and other mainstream tokens.
The most radical and exciting agent experiments will progress faster on decentralized social media (like Farcaster) as X strives to balance human and agent content.
You interact with "someone" online, only to realize later that you are conversing with an LLM.
Protocols and applications created by agents (like Spore.fun) will experience parabolic growth, filled with new tokens and experiments. Decentralization will drive capital into pre-existing leaders and applications that benefit from the overall growth of agents (COOKIE or VIRTUAL).
At least one AI-generated film will produce a truly perfect work of art—paving the way for AI-based Oscars in 2026.
Cookie.fun and rwa.xyz will become leading crypto data analysis platforms, akin to CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, Dun, and DefiLlama.
"Regular" meme coins will launch a true mascot/ambassador (or they will start to slowly weaken, but that will become irrelevant).
The cryptocurrency market will be divided into "left curve" crypto-native Degens and "middle curve" TradFi traders, the latter expecting value accumulation from DeFi games.
As Bitcoin believers hope to use their BTC as collateral for loans, BTCFi will finally explode, driving the adoption of runes and inscriptions on Bitcoin.
From now on, the competition between AGI and ASI will not slow down but will only accelerate, inevitably leading to almost every knowledge worker on Earth feeling existential anxiety. o3 has now defeated PhDs in specific fields; it can surpass most programmers. Moreover, it scores higher than the average person on ARC tests. Just as the ancients held the heliocentric theory, we believe in anthropocentrism; these narratives must change in the face of LLM, which has already passed the Turing test and shows momentum to lead the future.
As humanity struggles to find meaning in this rapidly changing world, a powerful AI-based religion not only captures attention but also brings some genuine converts. This may have occurred through the following means: Truth Terminal and GOAT, or temporarily planting these ideas as seeds for new concepts of meaning and direction.
My 23 Favorite Project Tokens
Having publicly published cryptocurrency 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 perhaps the list will be completely different. There are reasons these tokens occupy the market and have high market caps: they are exploring the frontiers of the future. Note, this is not financial advice! DYOR!
BTC has long been the "people's game." The discussion about Bitcoin as a strategic reserve has changed its fate. It has become the "king's game." The price of BTC will rise until owning 1 BTC becomes the dream of the majority.
Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL): The core infrastructure for AI agents on Base.
Ethena (ENA): TradFi understands returns better than any carbon-based life form on Earth; as TradFi enters the cryptocurrency space, they will covet protocols that may generate greater returns.
Tokenbot (CLANKER): A fun token issuance platform for the decentralized social network Farcaster, akin to pump.fun.
aixbt (AIXBT): If I could only follow one crypto alpha account on X, it would probably be AIXBT. Currently, it mostly replicates others' narratives, but it misses nothing; I hope AIXBT's insights will deepen and evolve over time.
Cookie DAO (COOKIE): Cookie.fun is a data analysis platform that emerged with the rise of AI Agents, providing data and sentiment analysis for all AI tokens; I believe this will attract crypto funds deployed in Q1 2025.
Helium (HNT): A leading DePin project in the crypto industry. In the past day, over 349,000 people used mobile phone services in the U.S.
Meta (META): A radical experiment that transforms difficult decisions into markets through futarchy.
Goatseus Maximus (GOAT): The first and original AI agent to gain a fervent following on social media, powered by Truth Terminal; the agent's backstory reads like a report written by Hunter S. Thompson after a drug binge.
Ondo Finance (ONDO) is currently a representative project in the RWA field, and oversupply may suppress price trends, but I would rather participate in trading than exit. Additionally, another RWA token worth noting is Chex Token (CHEX).
ai16z and Eliza. The Eliza framework for launching on-chain agents is a leading repo on GitHub, covering all industries (not just cryptocurrency), and is digging deeper into the long-term relevance of every branch.
Bittensor (TAO) claims to be the first "Neural Internet," providing a connected hub for decentralized AI projects to deploy code and compete for TAO. In some ways, I see it as a decentralized AI incubator and a testing ground for the feasibility of AI concepts.
WZRD (Bitcoin Wizards Ordinals) and PUPS (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 Sheldon's point of the well-known NFT puppet monkey in the BTC ecosystem.
Aave (AAVE), if we assume that one day everything will be tokenized, then most of those assets will qualify to be used as collateral on Aave's platform. AAVE is one of the few tokens in cryptocurrency that I believe will eventually reach a trillion-dollar scale.
Arweave (AR), as the permanent data storage layer for Web 4, is quietly moving forward. Including most Solana NFTs, Arweave permanently stores about 6TB of data each month, and its upcoming AO should be an important catalyst for further growth.
Zerebro (ZEREBRO), an OG "on-chain AI artist," can generate music, art, memes, and NFTs.
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 cannot ignore its connection to Altman and OpenAI; integration with OpenAI could make it one of the top ten currencies overnight.
Drift Protocol (DRIFT), on-chain perps and prediction markets on Solana, Solana has performed well in spot Memecoin trading, and I expect it will also start generating significant perp trading volume over time.
Griffain (GRIFFAIN) and AI Rig Complex (arc), competing for the title of "Virtuals of Solana."
Conclusion
We are warned that "this time is different" is a dangerous phrase, and only fools caught in speculative frenzy would believe it. However, 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, to some extent, correct. We are now standing on the edge of such a moment. The rules of society, traditions, and our perceptions of ourselves will all be rewritten. This process is brutal and will have consequences.
You can cling to the inherent ways, or you can become a pioneer of the era of change, letting our light illuminate the abyss and accelerate forward.
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