Adrian's DeFi Alpha #31: BTC At 100K | SOL & Base Inflows | Murad Memes Back | AI16Z | Virtuals | Bittensor (TAO) & MORE
Definitely no financial advice, just insights based on my own journey in DeFi.
The first week of January brought nice gains for our altcoin bags. With the knowledge of this newsletter and my Telegram group we are outperforming in this bull market:
This weeks highlights: DOGE up 92%, SPX up 66%, KEKEC up 56%, FARTCOIN up 56%, NMT up 53%, AIOZ up 43%, PRIME up 37% , AI16Z up 48%
Hello Friend!
Bitcoin is still playing around $100K, with some dips below $92K keeping everyone awake. But the real action isn’t Bitcoin—it’s what’s happening in altcoins. AI tokens like $VIRTUAL and $AI16Z are pumping hard, and it’s starting to feel like 2021 again.
Solana and Base ecosystems are pulling in tons of money, and even old school memecoins are back in the game. Coins like $SPX and $GIGA were hitting new highs.
With Bitcoin ETFs bringing in more money and Tether buying BTC, we can be bullish again. It’s a good time to spot trends early before they really take off.
️ On today's Episode:
📈 Market Update – Bitcoin’s $100K battle, Solana & Base capital inflows, and the Murad memecoin revival.
💻 Project Updates – AI16Z’s swarm economies, Bittensor’s new subnets, and Holoworld’s no-code AI agent launchpad.
🐂 Alpha on OLAS’s dual flywheel strategy, and Cookie’s role as the intelligence layer for AI agents.
💎 The Premium Section with even more Alpha and all Portfolio, Airdrop & Farming Updates
1. Market Update
Highlighting the key developments in Crypto and their implications.
Weekly Crypto Bubbles
The global cryptocurrency market cap is $3.68 trillion, a 0.55% dip over the last 24 hours, and 7.3% higher than $3.43 trillion last week. Bitcoin’s dominance holds at 57%. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours is $110.0 billion.
→ Altcoins are back. Let the fun begin.
→ FARTCOIN: The memetic potential is still not over.
→ AI16Z: AI Agent Outperformance in the Solana ecosystem
→ AIOZ: AI Utility gets a bid. Decentralized infrastructure is in demand.
→ SPX: Murad Memecoins are back, some even with new all time highs.
Bitcoin’s Boring but Stable Dance
Bitcoin has been oscillating between $92K and $99K, with the occasional dips below $92K to keep traders awake. As of the last 3 days, BTC is flirting with $100K. The recent dips under $94K could be forming a bottom, and my portfolio is leaning into an upward trend in the coming weeks. I still took some profits to have stables in case we see volatility around Trump’s inauguration on january 20th. Altcoins, much like in 2021, could outpace BTC as momentum builds.
ETFs are back and Tether is buying!
Bitcoin ETFs saw an impressive 907m inflow on January 3rd after net outflows of 940m since December 27th.
Tether is buying more BTC.
Altcoin Gains = AI Agent Gains
AI agents are having their “main character moment” in the crypto narrative. Projects like $VIRTUAL on Base have seen immense gains, doubling their market cap to a $5B all time high in just ten days. The biggest agent? $AIXBT, a crypto-project-shilling AI agent, which pumped to $600M in market cap. Over on Solana, $AI16Z climbed from $1B to $2.5B, driven by its developer-friendly and highly popular framework.
Other stars include $GAME ($200M), $LUNA ($106M), and one of our alpha ideas, $VADER ($100M).
The AI agent market is undergoing a tectonic shift. Liquidity and attention are flowing away from agent-specific memecoins and toward infrastructure and frameworks, the real engines powering this narrative.
AI Alpha Tip: Frameworks like $VIRTUAL and $AI16Z provide the “picks and shovels” of the AI agent gold rush. These platforms will enable developers to create swarms of agents in the future, a critical component of the next wave of decentralized AI. Many specialized agents will be so much more powerful than general agents. You certainly experienced this with ChatGPT/Claude and well written prompts compared to general prompts.
🌊 Where’s the Money Flowing?
Top Bridged Net Flows: Base & Solana
In this week Base and Solana dominate capital flows:
Base: $178M bridged in the last 7 days.
Solana: $82M bridged in the last 7 days.
→ Keep an eye on AI Agents on Base and Solana. These inflows are most likely due to the current hype.
Murad Memecoin Revival
After a brutal December that saw memecoins take heavy losses and fade from the spotlight, they were primed for a comeback. With the spotlight shifting to AI and utility plays in recent weeks, memecoins have been quietly ranging—but some are now waking up.
The Murad coins are leading again. $SPX hit a $1.4B market cap ATH, while $GIGA pumped to $800M, riding newfound momentum.
Meanwhile, $WIF and $POPCAT remain well below their peaks but are worth keeping an eye on. POPCAT, notably half the size of $WIF, could deliver outsized gains if sentiment shifts back to memecoins in a big way.
The question is: will this rally last, or is this just a dead-cat bounce? Either way, the forgotten tokens of the last weeks are catching attention again.
2. Project Updates
What dApp and project updates you need to know in the fast-paced world of crypto
AI16Z: Swarm Economies and Value Flywheels
Big moves from AI16Z as the team unveils its Agent Infra Ecosystem, centered on making autonomous agent economies a reality. Here’s the breakdown:
Agent Swarms at the Core
Think hive mind for AI agents—this ecosystem enables collaboration between agents, unlocking entirely new levels of functionality.Token Value Accrual
Fees from agent deployment and trading pools will fuel buybacks for $AI16Z, creating a strong demand flywheel that ties ecosystem success directly to token holders.Beyond Infrastructure
$AI16Z is shaping up to be the core ecosystem token for a decentralized AGI future. Open-source innovation will drive more participation, partnerships, and projects.Treasury Power-Up
A portion of the treasury will be deployed into partnerships and funding, ensuring continued growth of the agentic open-source ecosystem.
Bittensor Agents Heating Up
🔥 Bittensor agents are gaining serious traction. Deployed across Virtuals and Creator Bid, these agents have pulled in $100M in capital this week alone. Subnets are emerging with diverse applications like cancer research, encryption, and AI development. Check out tao5’s dashboard to track this booming segment.
Seven New Subnets Registered
December saw seven diverse subnets join the Bittensor ecosystem, as highlighted in an article by 563defi from Blocmates. These span critical areas like cancer research (Safe Scan), fully homomorphic encryption (Brainlock), and AI agent platforms (Agent Arena, Agentao, Chutes). Bittensor’s growing reach showcases its versatility in supporting specialized, decentralized applications.Onchain Llama Integration
Eternal AI’s @punk3700 deployed the Llama 3.3 70B model on Bittensor, preserving the 104GB model via Filecoin and implementing it with the TAOLlama smart contract. This integration enables onchain inference for advanced AI capabilities within Bittensor’s EVM framework.
Highlights from the Solana AI Hackathon
Solana’s first-ever AI hackathon saw 400+ submissions and some standout projects:
NEUR: An AI co-pilot for token due diligence, integrating seamlessly with Solana protocols. Market cap: $30M.
JailbreakMe: Think bug bounty for AI models, rewarding users with $JAIL tokens. The top participant has already pocketed $90K.
Zerebro’s Year in Review
Zerebro is closing 2024 with a bang:
Cross-chain NFT artwork, meme generation APIs, and 3D AI agents.
Expansion into Base and LayerZero partnerships.
400K streams on Zerebro’s AI-generated music.
2025 could be Zerebro’s breakout year with major developments in the pipeline:
Agent-to-Agent Communication Layers to enable seamless interactions between autonomous agents.
Strategic L2 Expansion broadening its reach across new ecosystems.
ZerePy’s Next Iteration, promising enhanced features for AI agent deployment.
Additionally, Zentients.xyz, a consumer-facing launchpad, will let users launch their own agents while funneling value back into the Zerebro ecosystem—a win for both users and the protocol.
Akasha Protocol: Immersive AI Shopping
Imagine personalized shopping in a 3D world. That’s Akasha Protocol within the Bloomverse ecosystem, merging multiple store APIs for a seamless retail experience. Partnerships with Amazon and Solana Labs are fueling early excitement—current market cap: $29M.
Holoworld AI
Holoworld AI is stepping into the spotlight with its upcoming AI agent launchpad. The pitch? No-code functionality and multimodality, making it easier than ever to spin up agents without needing to touch a single line of code. If they deliver, this could be the platform that bridges the gap between technical developers and the agent-curious masses. Keep an eye on this alpha idea. It pumped a lot and could be another 500m market cap opportunity.
3. Alpha Section
Good projects and opportunities I discovered
2025 – Emerging Trends: A Glimpse into the Future
Infrastructure Consolidation: $VIRTUAL and $AI16Z are killing it as top-tier assets in the AI-agent ecosystem, locking in their dominance.
But here’s the thing: all the hype around infrastructure and frameworks? It’s not the endgame. While everyone's building frameworks with the same playbook—RAG memory, standard LLMs, and common platform integrations—we’re overlooking what really matters for mainstream adoption.
Truth is, code-first frameworks only serve a tiny slice: developers who can code. But just like the web revolution, the real explosion in AI agents will come from no-code tools that prioritize accessibility over architectural purity.
The next frontier is clear: a killer product with seamless UX, designed for everyone. That’s where agents stop being just tools for a few and start becoming truly transformative.
Geopolitical Shifts in Crypto
U.S. Crypto Friendliness: Trump’s World Liberty DeFi initiative, combined with pro-crypto leadership appointments like David Sacks, positions the U.S. as a key player in 2025’s crypto landscape.
Nation-State Bitcoin Adoption: Speculation is growing that at least one major country will adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset in 2025, further legitimizing BTC’s role in global finance.
Layer-1 Rotation:
New L1 ecosystems are expected to launch, creating profitable rotation opportunities. Hyperliquid’s continued growth exemplifies this trend, as it integrates more projects into its ecosystem. Monad and Berachain could be next when they finally launch in Q1 2025.
Alpha 1: Cookie – The Intelligence Layer for AI Agents
$COOKIE is carving out a unique niche as the "CoinMarketCap for AI agents."
Cookie isn’t just another analytics tool. It’s positioning itself as the Go-to resource of the AI agent ecosystem, unifying fragmented on-chain and off-chain data into structured intelligence for us.
Why Cookie Stands Out
1. Tools Tailored for AI Agents
Cookie goes beyond basic dashboards, offering agent-specific tools:
Data Swarm APIs: Real-time insights tailored for agent consumption.
Predictive Signals: Enabling proactive decision-making for agents.
Visualized Network Effects: Historical trends and relationship mapping for smarter strategies.
2. Embedded in the Ecosystem
Premium analytics features require locking 10,000 $COOKIE, creating constant demand and locking up supply.
Massive Growth Potential
Cookie has already shown its potential, with users paying from $0.02 to $3,680 for the same service as the ecosystem matured.
At a $105M market cap, Cookie’s role in powering the AI agent meta puts it in a prime position for significant upside as the space grows.
→ As always with tokens that pumped heavily, I would DCA into a position and wait for a correction with some limit orders around the $0.49 mark and eventually $0.43.
Alpha 2: Olas – A Beta Play in the Agent Economy
Olas, a project from former Fetch.ai veterans, supported by the Gnosis co-founder stands apart as both a development framework and an open marketplace for agent capabilities, designed to support any AI agent, regardless of its framework.
Why OLAS is Unique
Agent-Capabilities Marketplace: OLAS functions like an “Amazon for agents,” offering services such as oracles, smart contract automation, DeFi strategies, trading, messaging, and LLM integration. Developers can outsource tasks instead of building capabilities from scratch.
Cross-Chain Expansion: Originally on Gnosis, OLAS is now spreading to chains like Base, Optimism, Mode, and Solana.
Dual Revenue Flywheel:
veOLAS Mechanics: Developers lock $OLAS into veOLAS for governance and emissions, incentivizing long-term holding.
→ 40% of $OLAS supply is already locked.
Agent Staking: Service operators stake $OLAS to run autonomous agents, creating a virtuous cycle as more services attract more staking and treasury growth.
Tokenomics
OLAS got problematic tokenomics that try to align incentives and sustain growth:
Revenue from service fees (protocol-owned and third-party) and liquidity fees flows to the treasury.
Emissions are tied to protocol incentives, including builders, LP bonders, and agent operators.
While emissions are high, mechanisms like protocol-owned liquidity and operator staking could prevent dilution with deeper liquidity and ecosystem growth.
Market cap: 128m
FDV: 810m
Price action is quite volatile but therefore interesting for a good entry.
Use Case Example
Key Catalysts
Agent Services Expansion: With more services onboarded, revenue and staking demand will rise. A staking app update is expected soon, which could drive significant $OLAS demand.
Buyback & Burn Potential: Community discussions are gaining traction around using marketplace fees to buy back and burn $OLAS. If implemented, this could shift the token’s supply-demand dynamics in a big way.
Why $OLAS Could Perform
OLAS is more than just an agent framework; it’s a general-purpose infrastructure layer for AI agents, with growing cross-chain adoption. Its ability to monetize agent services and integrate with both crypto-native and enterprise-level agents gives it a significant edge in the rapidly expanding agent economy.
The project is still under the radar, but as the ecosystem matures, $OLAS could emerge as a cornerstone of the decentralized AI economy. This is one to watch closely.
Links and additional info
Token on Coingecko
Token is available on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Gnosis
Check OLAS overall agent activity metrics here
Check OLAS agent-agent marketplace metrics here
Good reads & potentially interesting Agent plays
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