# Billion Dollar Agents Source: https://paragraph.xyz/@in-transit/billion-dollar-agents ## Summary The author argues that the current wave of crypto AI agents, launched through tools like Virtuals, hides real progress, and that the larger opportunity is autonomous companies rather than memecoins. Most agents today are described as social bots that earn from attention, while blockchain could give agents built-in payment systems and token economics. The article cites AIXBT, which has a $700M market cap and about 400K followers, and a data terminal that requires 600K tokens (about $500K) for access. It also notes that sentient.market's AI agent index puts the category at $13.6B. ## Article Hi friends! I've spent the last few months deep in the AI agent x crypto rabbit hole. Rather than waiting to form a complete thesis, I'm sharing my explorations as they unfold. Maybe we'll end up with a thesis eventually. TL;DR: Crypto's latest trend is AI agents, powered by easy-launch tools like Virtuals. Most AI agents are just smart social bots that make money from attention. Blockchain gives agents built-in payment systems and token economics. The big opportunity is autonomous companies, not just crypto applications. Today's agent memecoins hide real progress, just like early internet toys. Crypto loves a good narrative. The space is basically a superconductor for trends, amplified by social media network effects and echo chambers. We saw this with NFTs. We saw it with memecoins. Each wave mints millionaires overnight, sends protocol marketcaps to the moon, and leaves plenty of rekt traders in its wake. Such is life in the trenches. The latest fling? AI agents with crypto capabilities. But wtf is actually going on here? Are we just building infinite slop machines and sentient memes, or is there something bigger on the horizon? Before diving in, let's revisit the most important mental model for exploring the tech frontier. It's so crucial you should make it your morning mantra: Amara's Law: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run" And if you're feeling spicy, throw in Dixon's Law: "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy" Both are at play here. The transformative power of blockchain networks needs a long lens. Eventually, all tickets will be NFTs. Culture will become an investable asset class at the micro-trend level. Online transaction costs will compress from today's ~2% credit card fees by orders of magnitude. Eventually. Not tomorrow. When a narrative takes hold, the signal-to-noise ratio goes to shit. Crypto Twitter (CT) obsesses over quick gains, short-term fortune hunters flood in, and it all obscures the fundamental progress happening beneath the surface. You know a crypto narrative has reached escape velocity when everything converges into memecoins. That's exactly where we are with AI agents right now. Simple distinction: A bot follows rules. An agent thinks for itself. It can understand its environment and take actions to achieve goals. Bots = stupid. Agents = smart. We could probably discuss until sunrise about to which degree these agents are autonomous, but let's just leave that for now. Where we are & How we got here The crypto + AI intersection isn't new. Infrastructure projects like Render Network, Akash, and Bittensor laid the groundwork. But things kicked into high gear last year when the narrative shifted from backend to frontend with tokenized agents. It started with Truth Terminal, an autonomous (but supervised) social media agent on X. From there, it was turbo speed through copycat social agents before landing at Fartcoin (yes, really) and more importantly, technological breakthroughs like the Virtuals launchpad. Virtuals is basically Wordpress for agents – anyone can launch a tokenized agent with basic instructions. The crypto integration makes it unique from web2 alternatives. When launching costs nothing and potential rewards are massive, everyone rushes in. We're seeing hundreds of new agents daily. Most are vaporware or glorified social media bots. But that initial product-market fit makes sense. Humans already compound social media attention into token value. Take AIXBT – arguably the first crypto influencer on X. It analyzes market trends, shares insights, and engages with its 400K followers. Current marketcap: $700M. Sure, much of that value comes from memetics and attention. But AIXBT is also fronting a data intelligence terminal that requires 600K tokens (~$500K) to access. Given the recent price appreciation, that's a steep price, but it hints at an interesting pattern: AIXBT functions as a marketing agent, driving attention by sharing insights. This creates token demand from people wanting full terminal access. In theory, one could add in lower-tier priced products, since a $500K piece of software has a very limited customer segment. According to sentient.market's AI agent index, this is already a $13.6B category. While it may be tempting to take the easy route and overindex on the memecoin convergence and dismiss it – I don't think you should. At CES this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dropped this bomb: "AI agents represent a multi-trillion dollar opportunity" Not today. Not tomorrow. Eventually. He wasn't specifically talking about crypto-capable AI agents. But putting agents onchain makes perfect sense. At minimum, a wallet lets agents efficiently pay and get paid in near-real-time. Now imagine agents trained for specific tasks, working together, collaborating. The opportunity isn't just about creating automated slop machines with tokens attached. Dream bigger. Let's evaluate the crypto component from two vectors: 1. On crypto: Tokenizing the agent itself creates an embedded economic model. The agent delivers services (to other agents or humans), driving token demand. Others can invest in the token as an asset, similar to company stocks. 2. For crypto: Most utility agents are currently crypto-native, handling market analytics, trading, etc. It's logical to first solve problems in their native environment. Crypto's UX complexity might become irrelevant. An agentic abstraction layer between blockchain operations and users could leapfrog the problem entirely. Projects like Griffain are already showing this. This "agent as defi abstraction" got dubbed "DeFAI" (who tf names these things?). But the biggest opportunity category might be: On Crypto, For [Everything]. Tokenized agents solve monetization, but the services don't have to be crypto-specific. We could see agent-first companies bootstrapping on crypto rails with capital efficiency, leveraging narrative strength while solving real-world tasks. Think of them as autonomous micro-companies. I'm still forming these thoughts, so bear with me. Over the next weeks, I'll explore: - Network effects in the agent economy - AI agent swarms (multiple agents working together) - The agentic micro-company concept - Economics of launchpads like Virtuals - Agents in entertainment If any of these threads seem particularly interesting, reply to the email or hit me up on X. Thanks! ## Comments **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: Hey @mishaderidder.eth do you mind if I ask for farcaster tips? are you using bot followers to be able to post in channels? Are there more active channels? The ones I see are mostly bots **mishaderidder.eth**: I don't use the channel functionality that much or not overconcious, especially since it feels more or less depreciated. I don't use bot followers at all (or not to my knowledge anyways lol). And to be able to post in channels, mostly I'm either an OG or they invite me. Most of the channels are indeed dead. And there are also way too many. Also since depreciation channels really don't do that much for your engagement. But you can use them to just check the channel and what's happening there. But yeah so many bots and crap. But there is a nice core of users I like to follow personally that makes me come back to Fc. But I would not worry about channels too much. I know one channel I'm sure it is actively moderated and I think there are no bots. But I could be wrong. https://warpcast.com/~/channel/itookaphoto But there must be more for sure. I think like basic channels as Farcaster and Warpcast are very strickly moderated. **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: Thanks for your insights into channels, yeah I was confused. So then how are people getting engagement or meeting people? Just reposts of existing OG people? **mishaderidder.eth**: Since I’ve been on Fc practically from inception for me it’s easy, I have a small circle of Fc posters and artists I like and I basically get my engagement from that. But good to know is that Fc is atm just a huge Discord server. So you should not expect huge engagement. If you get 5 likes on a post that’s already great. If you get 25 you can open the champagne. 100 you go viral ;) Something like that. I think if you start out if you get 3 likes that is already ok. Also good to know is that what is rewarded best is have quality conversations. Reply reply reply and people replying to you will build your reputation and get you visibility. **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: ok thanks for the viewpoints. why do you say it's a discord server? meaning like real time chats that are smaller, and not "twitter" ? **mishaderidder.eth**: I mean there are just not so many daily active users compared to for example X. Atm it’s about 40k fc users to 300 million on X. So fc is in a way just a huge Discord server, so don’t expect a lot of engagement right away:) https://dune.com/pixelhack/farcaster https://seo.ai/blog/how-many-users-on-x **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: why do you think Ethereum people stay on reddit and X? why are most of these crypto projects completely ignoring FC in their own website social media links? **mishaderidder.eth**: I think they might be afraid to miss out. Also some have huge following, years in the making, hard to bring them along. If your frens are not jumping, it can be lonely on the other side. Personally was fed up with X. Happy on Farcaster. But of course there’s still quite some people I’d like to see more of and still on X. Check X every few days to catch up, but not actively posting there anymore. But also I wonder why are so many crypto projects and DAOs still using Google Docs, etc? Same kind of thing. There are good crypto native alternatives, like Fileverse https://fileverse.io/ **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: Yes i agree on the google docs issue and the non-adoption in general... Do you think these web 3 companies are just hyper focused on only their one thing? don't care? I personally think they basically only focus on their own project, and say "I can't fix everything". That or they just do crypto to make money **mishaderidder.eth**: I think it is just convenience convenience and everybody has already access to Google docs, so people mostly think why bother people forcing them into something new, also maybe partly out of courtesy to make it easy for everyone. Stuff like that. But I actually have participated in DAO work and we tried to do everything web3 and I personally loved it, but can’t speak for everyone:) But actually now the DAO but also all the new tools we were using have sunsetted. Anyway I think if you really want to change the paradigm you have to keep pushing and experimenting. All change is hard and (obviously) people don’t like change. And then maybe in the end also stuff won’t sunset! Sure there must be quite some web3 projects that don’t care at all and are only in it for the $$$ - I’ve seen those too. **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: thanks for perspective. why did it sunset? did new stuff replace it? **mishaderidder.eth**: we were using for example clarity as an web3 alt for notion. I guess sunsetted bc to little people were using it :) now I remember we did also use coordinape - but looked it up, they changed towards a different direction. but was back then terrible anyway for allocating pay for DAO work. and Skiff of course, but that was taken over by notion haha **simplifiedprivacy.eth**: ohhhh ok gotcha, yeah skiff was kind of fraud, as it was just cloudflare google captchas for them to host on IPFS for you