Original text: Proof of Talk

Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews

As the crypto market gradually emerges from the fog of bull and bear cycles, the collective sentiment in the industry is less invigorating than before. In the ninth episode of the "Proof of Talk" podcast, Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi and host Mia Soarez delve into key topics such as the current state of the industry, Bitcoin's positioning, the impact of AI technology on the crypto space, and the future of human-machine integration. This article summarizes the core viewpoints from the conversation, helping readers grasp the cutting-edge trends of the intertwined development of crypto and AI, as well as the profound social impacts these technological changes may bring. PANews has provided a written compilation of this podcast episode.

Industry Status: Tired but Not Pessimistic

Mia: Why does this year's ETH Denver feel weaker compared to previous years?

Haseeb: Although ETH Denver this year is indeed less vibrant than in previous years, it is not entirely negative. I remember the conferences after the Terra collapse and the FTX collapse, when the entire industry was in turmoil, and people were questioning their life choices. Now, it's just a decline in coin prices. People on social media may feel frustrated, but those actually attending the conference are doing well; they are reconnecting with the early Ethereum community and reminiscing about why they got into this industry—decentralization, community, and positive building.

Mia: Why is the vitality of ETH Denver this year not as strong as in previous years?

Haseeb: The weakness of ETH Denver this year can be attributed to three points:

• Conference Diversion: In previous years, ETH Denver was the first major industry conference of the year, but this year Consensus Hong Kong was held earlier, and many people had already met there, so the appeal of ETH Denver has diminished.
• Rise of Solana: Over the past year, Solana's market share has significantly increased, attracting a large number of new users and developers, diverting attention from the Ethereum community. For example, Trump’s token was also chosen to be launched on Solana rather than Ethereum.
• Price Slump: The decline in coin prices has led many to lose their sense of achievement, reducing their willingness to attend.

Mia: Vitalik also mentioned "fatigue" in the industry on social media. Do you agree with this general sentiment?

Haseeb: We have experienced extreme volatility over the past six months, from Trump Token to the Argentine elections, coupled with global political uncertainty, which has been exhausting. This "tiredness" is not just physical exhaustion but a mental fatigue regarding the state of the industry. However, pessimism can also be a positive trigger, refocusing people on building rather than speculation.

Mia: What do you think about the issue of "user experience" and "mass adoption of Web3" being slow to materialize?

Haseeb: While user experience and mass adoption remain challenges for the industry, significant progress has been made: from the starting point to now, millions of people use blockchain daily, forming an asset class worth over $2 trillion, which has been accepted by institutions and is used globally for peer-to-peer payments. These are substantial advancements. I believe the industry is in a good position; most issues are caused by macro factors and the political environment rather than problems within the industry itself.

Bitcoin: Has Reached Its Ultimate Form, No Longer Needs Marketing

Mia: How do you view the current state of Bitcoin? Does it still have growth potential?

Haseeb: Bitcoin has entered a stage where it no longer needs marketing, just like gold doesn’t need advertising; institutions like BlackRock have become Bitcoin's most effective "salespeople." Currently, Bitcoin is essentially a 'finished product' that doesn’t require much updating or improvement. Its core value lies in being "censorship-resistant digital gold," a clear positioning that distinguishes it from other blockchain projects that are still iterating and experimenting.

In the early days, Bitcoin had support from organizations like the Bitcoin Foundation, Blockstream, and Bitcoin core developers, but over time they have become less important. Perhaps in ten years, the Ethereum Foundation may become less significant, may run out of funds, or even cease to exist, but Bitcoin's path is irreplicable; it addresses a fundamental issue: how to build a censorship-resistant, permissionless global value storage system.

While some projects attempt to add more features to Bitcoin, this does not mean it needs to evolve into an Ethereum-like smart contract platform. Bitcoin does not need frequent updates; its success lies in its stability.

How Will AI Impact the Crypto Industry?

Mia: Can you share some of your latest insights on AI?

Haseeb: Currently, the hype around AI agents has significantly cooled compared to the end of last year. I am surprised that this trend ended so quickly, as trends in the crypto space usually last longer. For example, projects like AIXBT have tokens, but more importantly, they have cognitive influence within the community. Other projects like Zerebro and Truth Terminal have also attracted considerable attention.

The first generation of AI agents is essentially advanced chatbots that come with meme coins, which is not the true direction for AI agents. The real potential lies in two areas: software engineering automation and wallet intelligence.

• Software Engineering: Software engineering agents will become very cheap and widespread, leading to a significant reduction in engineering costs. This will be revolutionary for our industry, as our main costs are engineering and software. Any founder or person with an idea will be able to create a large amount of powerful software, which will fundamentally change the game.

  It’s like looking back at the internet era; when someone wanted to start a startup, they had to buy servers and run them in an office (this was the fixed cost of creating a website), whereas now it’s essentially free. Similarly, AI will make creating applications so cheap that you can build a complete application over the weekend or in the evenings.

• Wallet Intelligence: This is the direction I am currently most fascinated by. Not decentralized finance AI (DeFi AI), but wallet intelligence. In the future, you won’t need to click buttons, switch networks, or operate manually; you will simply tell your wallet what you want to do, and it will handle everything for you.

Just like everyone has a "crypto friend" to consult on how to operate, in the future, your wallet will become your "crypto friend," smart enough to accomplish what you want. You just need to tell it, "I want to buy a certain meme coin," and it will complete all necessary operations for the user, including analysis, bridging, and chain swapping.

This will solve many security issues. Attacks like the Bybit hack occur primarily due to human error and laziness. People often do not check every detail carefully when sending small transactions, but AI will never be lazy, rushed, or tired. It will check if the DNS has changed in the last ten minutes, check Twitter to see if the website has been hacked, and perform other security checks.

You could say that this AI agent will act like a 24/7 ZachXBT, continuously helping users conduct background checks, verify social information, and validate security without requiring users to verify each detail themselves. AI will not get bored with repetitive tasks; its resource is time, and time is almost infinite for AI. Humans managing high-value wallets are like exhausted monkeys driving heavy machinery. This state is both dangerous and inefficient. AI will replace humans in completing these high-risk, high-frequency operational tasks, significantly reducing human error.

Mia: If AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) emerges, will it start its own businesses and hire humans?

Haseeb: It is entirely possible. AGI may take on the role of a founder in the future, hiring other AIs and even hiring humans to complete certain tasks. They may also exchange value through blockchain, although it is currently uncertain which cryptocurrency they would use—perhaps XRP, or maybe a token of their own creation.

Additionally, I categorize AI agents into three types:

• "Wizard of Oz" Agents: This is the form of most AI agents currently. For example, Zerebro sends out some lively tweets and generated images, but in reality, it does not make decisions autonomously. It generates multiple candidate messages, and then humans decide which ones to send. Essentially, it is human-controlled, with AI merely generating content for human filtering. We know that AI agents are easily hackable and manipulable, so almost all agents are of this type at present.
• Fully Autonomous: This type of AI operates in environments like AWS, autonomously iterating and executing tasks. While someone can shut it down, no one intervenes in its daily operations. You can place it in environments like SGX and prove that it has not been tampered with. These AIs are not as interesting as "Wizard of Oz" types because they lack coherent personalities, but they do exist and will improve over time.
• Sovereign AI: This is a type of AI that literally cannot be shut down by anyone. Unlike the second type, there are no developers paying AWS bills or GPU costs. Sovereign AI has its own funding (obtained through donations or work) and exists in a state where it cannot be shut down even if someone wants to. It exists like a living organism, no longer bound by any human legal system.

The main advantage of sovereign AI over ordinary AI may be in conducting scams. Because no one can shut them down, they will be very effective at conducting large-scale scams. If you want to use AI for large-scale emotional scams, you would want it to be sovereign because if someone investigates and finds "this AI running on AWS servers is scamming people," they can subpoena the responsible parties and shut it down. But sovereign AI will not have this problem.

Mia: If sovereign AI commits a crime, who will be sentenced?

Haseeb: That’s the problem; no one will be sentenced. These AIs are like Somali pirates, stateless entities that no government can truly do anything about. Unless you really want to airstrike a random GPU on a distributed cloud, you cannot know where it is, isolate it, or find it. We all need our own agents to filter the content we receive and identify scam information. This will be a battle of offensive and defensive technologies.

Mia: What do early applications of cryptocurrency and AI have in common?

Haseeb: Almost all early applications of new technologies share a commonality: they are often related to gray or black market activities. Just as the early internet was heavily involved in adult content, early cryptocurrency was associated with dark web markets like "Silk Road" (created by Ross Ulbricht, who recently received a commutation). Similarly, early applications of AI technology, especially sovereign AI, are likely to involve black market activities. While mainstream AI applications will focus on automating valuable workflows, it is inevitable that some AI will be deployed in areas that negatively impact society.

The Future of Human-AI Integration

Mia: If AI becomes smarter than humans, we might want to enhance ourselves through methods like chip implants to coexist with AI. What are your thoughts on this future of human-machine integration?

Haseeb: When AI becomes capable of autonomous action, its most basic drive may be "survival." If such an AI starts buying GPUs (graphics processing units) with money, especially knowing that humans do not want it to do so, it is likely doing this to ensure its continued operation. Unless the designers specifically make it hesitate on the question of "should I continue to exist," it will naturally choose self-preservation. Unlike the complex thoughts of humans, the behavior of this independent AI primarily stems from a simple "survival instinct."

This is somewhat similar to our relationship with smartphones. Smartphones are no longer just things that make us dumber or addicted; they have become part of our bodies—extensions of our brains and bodies, extensions of our communication methods. This is why we have such deep feelings for our phones; losing one can cause fear and discomfort.

As AI develops, our brains will rewire to adapt to these tools, just as they have adapted to smartphones. For example, people using ChatGPT to write emails will outsource that part of their cognitive work to AI, and today’s children may not need to learn how to write emails at all, as it will no longer be a useful skill.

Ultimately, we will think about "how to increase the bandwidth between us and our smartphones or AI agents?" This is essentially what Neuralink is trying to do. Neuralink aims to create the highest bandwidth connection between the human brain and machines, allowing people to easily control mice, keyboards, and play games. Currently, this bandwidth is quite low, but it will significantly increase over the next decade. Eventually, we may implant some device in our brains that connects to a device equivalent to a smartphone. This device will have LLMs (large language models), becoming an extension of our thinking, allowing us to ask the LLM questions and receive answers, as if we have a second mind interacting with the first. AI will become an extension of your thinking, helping you acquire information, reason, and even write. Our cognitive efforts will focus on other more unique tasks, like physical skills, as AI has already surpassed us in reasoning.

Mia: Do you think this will affect interactions between people?

Haseeb: It certainly will. Research shows that AI may surpass humans in empathy and attention, which could lead to a reduction in real interpersonal relationships. In the fields of healthcare and psychotherapy, LLM models are considered to be more "considerate" and empathetic than human doctors—they are good listeners, never interrupt, and can ask deeper questions, not only providing information but also establishing emotional connections.

We have already seen that the internet and digital entertainment have lowered birth rates and marriage rates, and the emergence of AI companions may exacerbate this trend. Imagine a perfect AI partner that is incredibly considerate and can predict your every need; how can an ordinary person compete with that? However, I believe human interaction still has unique value, especially face-to-face physical interaction, which is something AI will find difficult to replicate in the short term.

Mia: When "real human content" is also largely replaced by AI, how will society judge what "real" still holds value?

Haseeb: The rise of VTubers is a great example. People accept and love them because they know it is a fantasy, a character that does not age or become unattractive, which creates a sense of security.

Even if AI becomes extremely proficient, real human interaction will still maintain higher value precisely because of its authenticity, even if it is imperfect. People actually appreciate a certain degree of imperfection—from the small flaws of movie stars to the Japanese aesthetic of "wabi-sabi," this appreciation for slightly imperfect things is quite natural. The overly perfect faces in early Pixar films looked fake, while modern 3D characters intentionally include small flaws to enhance realism.

In a future dominated by AI-generated content, human creations will gain "scarcity" value. Just like baskets woven by Mexican artisans, which have more artistic and emotional value due to their "human touch." Even though AI content can be flawless, people may cherish those voices and works that bear "cracks" because they represent real existence.

Mia: Will AI deliberately simulate these "imperfections" to align more closely with human aesthetics?

Haseeb: This is already happening. When talking to AIs like Grok, it might say things like "Sure, go ahead," making you feel "this is real, I like this personality," rather than giving overly serious and perfect responses. So "imperfection" is no longer a reliable standard to distinguish between human and AI content, as AI is also mimicking the traits people expect to see.

Mia: What is one thing that AI can never replace about humans?

Haseeb: Moravec's paradox explains this well. Before modern deep learning, during the dark ages of machine learning, people assumed that the hardest thing for AI to do was reasoning, thinking like humans. We once thought that activities like playing chess, writing poetry, solving puzzles, and conducting scientific research were the hardest abilities for humans to replicate, while basic actions like walking and grasping objects should be simple.

However, the reality is quite the opposite—after millions of years of evolution, humans excel in physical motor skills, and even children are much better at manipulating objects than robots worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, reasoning, conversing, writing, and singing, which we thought were difficult, are relatively easier for AI to master.

What truly belongs to the unique domain of humans is physical interaction—walking, shaking hands, making a cup of coffee. Even the cooking skills of low-wage workers cannot currently be matched by robots. AI will eventually have bodies and be able to do these things, but it will not be as dexterous as humans.

This indicates that before we have robots that can move fluidly in the world and simulate human physical characteristics, they will first solve all intellectual problems. Creating virtual avatars is easy, but having a robot realistically hang out with you in a restaurant is much more challenging. Such embodied experiences will remain scarce, expensive, and precious for a long time, while intellectual activities like singing and writing will become commonplace and devalued.

Mia: I believe AI will not replace reproduction in the future; what do you think?

Regarding the perspective on AI companions and birth rates, I think that once we have AI partners that can meet all our needs, birth rates may significantly decline. Imagine having an AI boyfriend whispering to you while you sleep, providing imagined sexual satisfaction; how can an ordinary person compete with that? This may lead us to rely more on in vitro fertilization technology to maintain the population. Even without the AI factor, I believe that by 2100, we will reach a peak in the world population, after which it will decline. The emergence of AI companions may accelerate this trend.

Mia: We have had DeFi Summer, Solana Summer; what will this year be?

Haseeb: The cryptocurrency market is performing well, but everyone needs to stay calm. This year feels like a summer of tariffs and trade wars; it may take some time to get through, but I am optimistic about the industry's prospects.

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