In the past month, there’s been an explosion of announcements around AI agents, even from companies like Stripe and Circle, which have little to do with Truth Terminal or Zerebro. For example, Stripe released documentation about adding payment features to agent workflows, while Circle published a deep dive on how developers can integrate USDC with various agents.
You might be thinking… so what?
It’s true that major tech companies are talking about agents. But who isn’t?
What’s striking, though, is that the crypto bubble now feels eerily similar to what’s happening in other tech sectors. Sure, the style might differ, but the underlying narrative is the same.
For regular folks, cryptocurrency has always seemed a bit weird. But even in the tech world, it’s viewed as a less-than-savory industry. And rightfully so—cryptocurrency has earned its reputation thanks to the insane headlines, scams, and controversies. In fact, a lot of crypto insiders themselves dismiss many of the trends as nonsense.
Still, there’s a growing sense that crypto and other tech sectors might soon overlap more than we think. Up until now, crypto has mostly attracted artists and quants, but things are shifting. With the loosening of crypto regulations, we might be on the brink of a broader adoption.
The big news? SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announced he will step down on January 20, which has the potential to be a game-changer for crypto. Gensler has been one of the biggest obstacles to crypto’s growth over the past four years, with his aggressive regulatory stance and personal attacks on the industry. As Linda pointed out, companies like Coinbase, ConsenSys, and countless others have spent millions lobbying Washington to fight back.
Just look at the recent election in Ohio, where Republican candidate Bernie Moreno secured $40.1 million in donations and defeated Democrat Sherrod Brown. Brown had been a staunch opponent of crypto regulations, so Moreno’s win is being seen as a massive victory for the industry. The growing conversation around the potential of the U.S. holding a strategic Bitcoin reserve is insane. Over the past few weeks, the momentum for crypto has surged—prices are up, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is gaining traction, and the federal government might soon hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
But what does all of this have to do with AI agents and broader tech adoption?
Well, one of the key concerns among builders in other tech sectors is that crypto still lacks clear regulatory frameworks in the U.S. Without legal clarity, the idea of integrating this unstable technology into their work feels risky. But with a new government beginning to embrace crypto and set clear regulations, other tech sectors will soon start exploring it.
Vitalik Buterin put it perfectly in this screenshot: the lack of regulatory certainty has been the biggest barrier preventing builders from adopting crypto. Those who aren’t involved in the ecosystem might view crypto through the lens of embarrassing headlines about Memecoin millionaires and pump-and-dump schemes. But convincing an engineer at Anthropic to start using crypto isn’t exactly the way to win them over. Let’s hope that, over the next four years, pro-crypto politicians will do their part to make crypto easier and safer for the masses.
Packy McCormick wrote in his article “The Trump Bubble” that the next four years will be a golden period for experimentation and optimism. While I don’t completely agree with the second half of his article (it feels a bit overly optimistic), I do think he raises some solid points about how attitudes toward progress are shifting. Things are going to get more efficient, crazier, and more experimental.
This shift can be described as what Byrne Hobart and Tobias Harris refer to as the “Inflection Point Bubble.” An inflection point bubble happens when investors believe the future will be drastically different from the past. Think about the dot-com bubble: if you believe the future will look completely different, you’ll buy stocks that stand to benefit from that change.
I bring this up because cryptocurrency—not traditional venture capital—might just become the financial pillar of the next inflection point bubble. Truth Terminal does a great job explaining this:
It’s not that 90% of memecoins are poised to succeed—not by a long shot. But when certain tokenomics models are done right, memecoins could eventually compete with what people traditionally consider “good investments.” With advancements in energy, AI, biotech, and gaming, the combination of AI agents and crypto tokens might just unlock 10x more efficient ways to experiment with new ideas.
Imagine you’ve been a nuclear engineer in the energy sector for decades and now want to bring your vision to life. You might spend months convincing venture capitalists to back your idea, building a team, and growing a community. But with the right crypto and AI agent tools, you could potentially move much faster and experiment on a whole new level.
As more tech industries start embracing AI agents and crypto, we could be looking at the dawn of a whole new era. Who knows? We might be on the brink of something even bigger than the last crypto bubble.