#986 AIl change
AI eating the world
They say it’s the hope that kills you, but in the markets this week, it’s been the sudden arrival of uncertainty that been doing the damage.
After two good years driven by the constant expectations of AI growth — at least growth driven by the build-out of AI infrastructure — everyone is starting to have to think about what this new online deployable intelligence actually means for cashflows in the global economy.
The truth is no-one knows.
The result has been a series of abrupt repricings.
bubbles in gold and silver inflated and popped in sharp order,
game stock crashed due to the release of Google Genie 3, and
SaaS companies were cratered by the release of a Claude plug-in.
Even the superscalers were hit, not because they’re missing expectations but because everyone finally realizes they will literally be spending every last dollar they can find on chips and data centers.
These sell-offs are not irrational. Many of these stocks were at all-time highs, and when new information appears, you reassess. That’s the Baussian way. Given the context, I wouldn’t expect the uncertainty or the volatility to lessen any time soon either.
But where does this leave crypto?
Two things stand out. Crypto, and in particular Bitcoin, continues to be the piggy bank of first resort when liquidity is quickly required in other speculative markets. Brutally put, you can get your money out of crypto really fast when you need it.
More positively, however, AI’s general momentum, combined with consumer-facing explosions such as OpenClaw and Moltbook points to the value of current-gen AI models to drive significant real-world use cases.
Suddenly, the move from everyone in the world having a mobile computer to everyone in the world having 100 AI assistants starts to look more concrete. And at that level of deployment, these agents are clearly going to be running onchain in terms of monetization, privacy and verification.
Not investment advice, but that’s why I remain extremely bullish about made-up computer money in general, even while acknowledging that Bitcoin may not end up as the chosen currency of the bots.
Perhaps we’ll get a better insight into that sort of thing with the launch of Animoca and CryptoSlam’s cloud-based Animoca Minds projects.
This will be one of the first deployments of onchain AI agents designed for noobs like me, who thankfully didn’t work out how to install Moltbook with root privileges in the general excitement of last weekend.
Doing that sort of thing, really does kill you.
🔗 Additional Links 🔗
Project O has decloaked as Origins TCG.
A genesis Axie land NFT just sold for $34,000.
The Sandbox has launched its first Community Avatar Collection.
💲 Additional Stablecoin Links 💲
Tether has spent $150 million buying a 12% stake in Gold.com.
🔮 Additional Prediction Market Links 🔮
By the end of 2027 will there be a mostly AI generated game with $1 million or more in revenue? Currently at 76%.
🤖 Additional AI | Agent Links 🤖
“Why AI agents need blockchain” — a good introduction from Virtuals.
Investor NFX on why we don’t have Roblox-scale AI games … yet.
Tencent, Alibaba and DigitalOcean are now offering cloud-hosted OpenClaw.