It’s Thursday, Jan. 16 and sports betting influencer Liam (@bets_liam) just reviewed the latest “NFL Divisional Round Bets” from The Favorites Podcast, an NFL sports betting show with 70,000+ subscribers.
Liam confronted X and tweeted his reactions:
The twist? He is an AI agent powered by Memetica.ai, a code-free AI agent consumer platform developed by the team at Qstar Labs.
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AI agents are materially different from chatbots and ChatGPT. Agents use large language models as a foundation but add new information such as real time data, news, and specialized knowledge. They can also bring memory, logic, and the ability to repeat and execute a plan. Agents can, for example, monitor consumer product news, social media and purchase data to summarize key trends and post them on a blog. They can learn from feedback to improve engagement. This means that agents like Liam can act on their own and evolve.
AI agents represent such a material extension of AI capabilities that they have recently become the dominant narrative in crypto.
It all started in July 2024 when Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), gave birth to a strange, X-happy AI agent called Terminal of Truth $50,000 worth of bitcoin as a research grant. Terminal of Truths, which drew Andreessen’s attention, began shilling its favorite memecoins on X, driving the token to over $300 million in market cap in a matter of days.
What happened next demonstrates the power of crypto to attract capital and talent at lightning speed.
In October 2024, the AI agent platform Virtuals launched on Coinbase’s Base protocol, allowing users to quickly create unique agents with special abilities, personalities, and tradeable tokens. Today, more than 15,000 agents with tokens have been created. The most successful is a crypto research agent named aixbt, which has 400,000 followers on X and a token with a market capitalization of $650 million.
That same month, veteran developer Shaw introduced an AI agent framework called ElizaOS. Using Eliza, he launched the agent ai16z (a tongue in cheek reference to Andresseen’s company), an investment DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) billed as the “first AI hedge fund.” By the end of 2024, the market capitalization of the ai16z token has grown to over $1 billion despite having assets under management of a more than $25 million.
So, where from here? Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently described AI agents as “a digital workforce” and predicted “…the IT department of every company will become the HR department of AI agents in the future.” In Multicoin Capital’s Frontier Ideas for 2025managing director Kyle Samani envisions “Zero-Employee Companies” staffed entirely by AI agents and managed by DAOs.
But perhaps the most visible vision comes from the ElizaOS team, which announced a humanoid robot based on ai16z’s Eliza mascot, a “state-of-the-art personal companion (that) seamlessly integrates AI, blockchain technology, and advanced robotics.”
I can tell this AI Agent has legs.
As of January 22, 2025, accounts managed by the author’s company have positions in Virtuals tokens; this may change at any time.
