People will look at $ASTER, say it’s a slow rug and then go lose their money on a $40K mcap shitcoin
I look at $ASTER and see a generational opportunity
People starting to realize that x402 is not so useful right now because most Crypto AI agents are useless
In order for the AI agents to be useful, we need to make them solve real problems, we need tailored AI workflows and products that actually increase productivity & reduce costs for enterprise & retail users.
a16z analyzed startup spending across ~200,000 startup customers, and identified ~50 AI apps/agents in their latest AI Application Spending Report (excluding GPUs, cloud, hyperscalers)
- 60% of the apps are horizontal — tools that can be used across many roles/functions
- 40% are vertical — domain-specific or role-specific tools
- General LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity dominated horizontal
- Meeting tools (OtterAI), creative tools (ElevenLabs, Canva, Midjourney), and vibe-coding tools (Replit, Cursor, Lovable) are becoming enterprise-relevant
- Vertical apps often serve as augmentors helping human workers improve their productivity, few are substitutes (completely replacing human)
- Customer support agents (Lorikeet), Sales/GTM workflows (Instantly), HR/recruiting workflows (Micro1), operations & compliance workflows (Delve, Combinely) are dominating the vertical front.
- Vertical workflows: these are agents that basically act almost like human within their respective role, working 24/7 — AI agents that resolve tickets, chat with customers, integrate with knowledge base/CRM or AI agents that cold call, reach out to potential leads, analyze sales, and improve the user funnel
What about Crypto AI?
As for Crypto AI apps/agents (excluding decentralized compute & inference infra providers), most are netting in 6-7 figs ARR. The only segment that makes 8 figs rev is launchpad category whose rev is generated from trading vol (prioritizing hype & speculation)
If we were to follow the path to full agentic economy starting with x402 as the payment rail, we need all the right infra to answer these questions:
- Before we pay them, how can we trust these AI apps/agents?
- What should be the work contract, what's the scope of work, what's the KPIs, how do we know if work is done properly, if it's done poorly, can we initiate the refund?
- If work is done well, can we tell other people/agents about this? reputation registry, linkedin/trust score for agents that everyone can verify
- How do we make sure agents don't hallucinate? How do we make sure they don't get hacked, exploited, prompt injected?
At the end of the day, simply handing money to agents so they can pay to other agents for microservices is not it. Agentic economy requires us to answer all the above questions and more.
Back to talking about useful, quality services in Crypto AI that people would pay for. Are there any?
It's mostly niche af. Most I'd just use for free instead of paying for it. The fun part is identifying these & investing in them early.
How I see this
10x plays will come from Crypto AI teams that's good at marketing
100x plays will come from Crypto AI teams whose product is useful for Crypto-native enterprises & retail
1000x plays will come from Crypto AI teams with product that people outside of Crypto would use
Sharing some more thoughts later this week.
Just to paint a better picture of how agentic economy will look like and how x402 (and its auxiliary infra) tie it all together
Imagine you're talking with your team in a Slack chat. Let's say it's about this new product + new marketing campaign that you & your team wanna do.
Product getting ready in 2 weeks & TGE slated in 4 weeks and you need to make sure to have solid marketing plan, partnerships, and content mapped out ahead of the product launch.
After you're done talking to your team, suddenly an AI who's been hiding under your Slack chats spin up a comprehensive marketing plan detailing who you should target, the types of content you should roll out, potential partners to add value to your product + amplify the marketing,
InfoFi partners (Kaito & Cookie w/ pros and cons), parse through social sentiment data, look at competitors and understand who are the competitors and how to position your project as an entirely unique project, create liquidity bootstrapping program accompanied by a toggleable token financial model, reach out to potential whales & DAOs that can seed TVL, perform token launch partner analysis with pros & cons and contact persons to reach out to (Kaito, Legion, MetaDAO, Binance, etc)
All of this with a Gantt chart and a question or two "Would you like to expand further on everything?" or "should I execute everything based on this timeline and all the details provided?"
This AI appears to be an entrepreneur level worker that can probably replace 2-5 human workers in your organization. Sounds great but this is very hard to pull off and will very likely require a swarm of specialized agents working together to deliver a desirable outcome.
You'd need an agent with memory/context that understands what's going on within the Slack chats and pick apart things that matter & things that don't, an agent that's specialized in CT marketing & growth, an agent that that can use Arkham, Nansen, Bubblemaps, and blockchain explorers, an agent that can use messaging app, an agent that's tokenomics expert, an agent with deep Defi domain knowledge, an agent with deep ICO knowledge, and so on and so forth.
You get the idea.
On top of this, you'd need an Orchestrator that can understand what to do. Specialized agents know "how to do it" while Orchestrator understand what to do and who to do it.
Now each of these agent will likely come from different startups, different projects, and different providers.
x402 enables them to pay each other per-use, per-second, per-service. It doesn't map out the contractual agreement, the billing, the after service (giving scores, reputation), the trust layer (whether there's an agent that has malicious intent OR an agent that's out to provide poor work quality, take the money, and run away), you also don't know whether an agent could hallucinate and do things that are unintended.
This is where all the foundational infrastructure becomes extremely important. Without them, we won't have an agentic economy.
Where are we now in this agentic economy?
The perfect analogy would be when humans discovered that cows, while very useful are expirable and can't be moved across great distance, it can't be used as THE medium of exchange.
Instead, humans discovered this shiny little things along the river, it can be shaped however they want, it's shiny, and people are starting to "believe" that it's value able.
The agentic economy now is like human in the past when we discovered gold as medium of exchange.
Agents discovered that stablecoins are medium of exchange (the gold) while x402 is the rail to transfer those gold.
Most Crypto agents struggle to find buyers, they're stuck in their little villages and need transportation infrastructure to get their product out there. Once there are more bridges, trains, cars, and airplanes (distribution) for the agents. They need to adapt so that they can sell their services/products to the buyers (shift to normie-friendly UI/UX)
[This is probably too rough of an analogy but hopefully you get the idea lol]
Core Principles for Profitable Meme Coin Trading
Buy Low: Never Chase Green Candles
Enter positions during price weakness or consolidation, not when hype is peaking. Chasing green candles is how you become exit liquidity. Patience pays. Wait for retracements, confirmations, or strong support levels.
Always Use Technical Analysis (TA)
Even meme coins follow patterns. Draw key trendlines:
primary trendline to gauge market direction + the downtrend resistance line to anticipate breakout zones.
TA helps you avoid impulsive buys and gives structure to your trades.
Take Profits Without Regret: Avoid Rebuying Out of FOMO
Lock in gains when targets are met. Don’t let FOMO drag you back into a coin just because it keeps running. Meme coins are often pump-and-dump by design. Once you exit, move on, never emotionally re-enter a closed position.
Respect Your Profit Target - Then Log Off
If your trade hits your target, walk away. Forcing more trades out of boredom or greed ruins discipline. Trading less often, but with precision, protects your mental and physical health and prevents emotional, reactive decisions.
Develop Your Own Edge: Don't Just Copy Wallets or TL Calls
While tracking smart wallets or other traders can give ideas, your best trades will come from your own system. Create your own entry criteria, timing, and risk management rules. Relying too much on others erodes confidence and accountability.
You're wasting your time getting farmed on sub $500k coins whilst the smart players are bidding mid - high caps with size and make your lifetime's salary in weeks.
Just letting you know.
Answer: Clear trading plan.
Let me give you an example how I do it:
1. 4h chart - Basic pattern bullish?
- Inverse H&S pattern ✅
2. When to get out?
- draw in important lines
- TP a part of your bag on resistance levels
- get out (Cut) when your plan becomes invalid
3. Set alarms at these levels on your dexscreener app and/or set limit sell orders on Axiom (alternatively on Jupiter)
- eliminate the urge to stare at charts
- invest your time in productive things
4. Follow through with your plan, always.
Be blunt, unemotional and effective in your trading routine.
Don't waste time emotionally staring at the same charts.
I did it EXACTLY the same way, for years.
It leads to constant overtrading.
Just my experience and the resulting approach.
No hectic, not everything at once.
It's not about investing in every single runner from the start.
The goal is to accumulate strong memes with good theses during the bottoming process and let them run.
The Inverse H&S pattern is your friend.
4h charts are your friends.
Focus.