For years, Crypto positioned himself as the next great technological revolution. But as we witness the explosive rise of AI, it is time for cryptography to face the truth: the true technological revolution of our era is artificial intelligence, and cryptography will play a secondary role instead of being the star.
It is not about reducing the importance of the industry or the quality of what is built. I helped pioneers in institutional investment in Bitcoin, and I have operated and invested in numerous companies that are built in the chain. I also got a doctorate in AI. The simple truth is that the construction of intelligent systems that solve real world problems should be the mission, whether or not blockchain is included.
With respect to pure cryptography, the only segment that remains standing is defi. Objectively, a better version of Trafi, Defi has a better engineering, programability and compositions. This is properly captured with the meme: Internet capital markets. The stable and the token have shown an exceptional product market adjustment, and they are still the demonstration of Crypto (only read: alone) of a real tangible value to date. As such, institutions are coming and for a good reason. Blackrock, Robinhood and even crypto-national unconditional ones such as Coinbase are building cryptographic products with the expectation of imminent regulatory clarity. Moveing instant world payments and liquidation along with more complex financial instruments in the chain is obvious.
Otherwise, there is ia. There are Tradai such as the great laboratories, construction models and suppliers of LLM. There are open weight as Deepseek and Mistral. There is open source ia like Nous. AI applications as cursor and adorable. Agents like Manus. Robotics And even the decentralized or crypto x ai (we will reach that in a minute …). In short, there is more demand for products and services than ever for pure cryptography applications.
This is captured by another meme: if you are in Crypto, pivot to ai.
This should not surprise us. While Crypto has struggled to find conventional use cases beyond speculation and game, AI is already improving productivity and is making its way to transform industries worldwide.
What is more? An alerting reality for cryptography, accentuated by Memecoin’s recent activity and what has been called “Crime Szn”, has been the disconnection between Token values and real technological utility. While decentralized technology itself is Revolutionary, the value captured by the tokens has historically been driven more by the memical attraction than by the creation of genuine technological value (there have been calls to be based on “foundations” in recent times, but we will see if it has legs …). This is not necessarily a criticism (the value of the meme is a real value in many ways, but highlights a fundamental weakness of cryptography as an independent industry.
This does not mean Crypto Rekt. In fact, blockchain and cryptography protocols can become essential components of a future AI technology battery. But they will serve as a underlying infrastructure to Ai-Primero’s products and services, instead of as independent products.
Consider ways of Get it to be cheap again: Distributed computer power for training and inference, verifiable calculation and data origin, tokenized access to computer resources, decentralized storage of training data and transparent reward mechanisms for the contribution. Distributed computer and deposit architectures, as well as transparent verification systems, have demonstrated their usefulness. But, and this is crucial, they will do it at the service of products and services that solve real problems for conventional users who do not know or care about the underlying technical infrastructure.
We could imagine protocols built using blockchains that generate income through licenses or use and are paid in other tokenized forms of value such as Stablecoins, a marked model contrast with the Token model as a product currently as a product To the mode.
For founders and equipment currently focused on native cryptographic applications, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is expanding beyond the comfortable but limited cryptographic ecosystem, mainly represented by Crypto Twitter and [Insert Your Favorite Conference Here]. The opportunity is participating in the genuine technological revolution that represents AI.
What does this mean in practice? First, teams should start thinking bigger. Founders should ask how AI can transform their target market, and then consider how cryptographic technology could help enable that transformation. This means fundamentally changing how we approach the construction and marketing of cryptographic products.
Instead of starting with the token, tokenomics or even block chains in general, they begin with real world problems that could solve. Only then should the equipment identify where decentralized systems could improve the AI and implement these pieces of the battery where they really add value.
Take advantage of cryptography where it makes sense, especially where you can mitigate costs or improve efficiency, but keep the focus directly on offering value through intelligence and automation.
For example, companies could use blockchains to create decentralized markets for critical processes, which makes AI more accessible and profitable (Vast.AI, a Nazaré portfolio company, does this for GPU and Orchid has been redefining the internet and privacy with decentralized markets for years).
Agents can also use cryptographic verification or privacy systems to act safely and safely in our online name using our login information, identities and credit cards, or even private keys and wallets in the chain.
In both cases, Crypto serves the broadest objective of making IA systems more effective and reliable.
The companies that will prosper in this new panorama are those that understand this dynamic. They will build AI-FIRST products that incorporate cryptography where it adds a genuine value, or will build cryptography services explicitly designed to improve products or services based on AI. The market will not support the teams that run by exercising the hammer that is blockchains treating everything as a nail.
Ultimately, it is about properly understanding the relationship between crypto and Ia. The future belongs to AI as the main framework while carefully incorporating cryptography when appropriate.
During much of the cryptographic industry, this is a real time and a deep recalibration. We can hold on to cryptography narration as an independent revolution and speculative tokens as retail products, or we can adopt Crypto’s support role as excellent technology in the AI service.
The latter can be less glamorous (and perhaps less valuable for investment portfolios), but ultimately it is more likely to create a real value and impact.
The sooner we accept this reality, the better positioned we will be to contribute significantly to the technological transformation that is already underway. It is time for the cryptographic industry to think bigger than itself.
If you are in Crypto, pivot Ai.
