Austin Barack
CIO of RockawayX Liquid, Fundamental Long/Short Investing
Five AI-crypto categories are very likely to materially outperform the broader market, because each has liquid tokens with demonstrated traction, revenue and accelerating growth. They are consumer AI apps that preserve data privacy, distributed training of models comparable to the frontier labs', data protocols for model pretraining, tokenized compute, and identity attestation. x.com
Agent payments and AI infrastructure make AI crypto one of the strongest early-bull-market narratives. Coinbase's x402 is the clearest signal: agents made 138 million-plus Base transactions, mostly under 10 cents. Bittensor subnets earn outside revenue; Render and Akash supply GPU power; NEAR builds agent rails. Grayscale's AI crypto sector rose 54% in September vs roughly 24% for the broader market. Still early and volatile; rotation may follow if Bitcoin holds a base and the narrative sticks. … Show more
Privacy and AI tokens are converging into core infrastructure, because autonomous agents handling wallets, payments and identity need private execution. Zcash is among the strongest pure privacy plays, NEAR targets AI and confidential coordination, Chainlink feeds agents trusted data, and Bittensor sits where AI compute meets crypto. Phala and Nillion, tied to confidential compute, could move violently either way. The whole sector is worth $59 billion against Nvidia's $5.1 trillion. x.com x.com … Show more
Bittensor is a crypto-Ponzi with no utility or product-market fit, driven entirely by token inflation: about $328M of TAO is printed annually against only $15M of revenue. Holders fund subnets through inflation, yet operators keep 100% of revenue plus 18% of emissions. Per Pine Analytics, unsubsidized inference on the Chutes subnet costs up to 3.5x centralized rivals, as decentralized compute needs verification and replication and suffers latency. It is unsustainable and headed for collapse. … Show more
Crypto's maturation, alongside monetary debasement, should keep the revenue-generating and store-of-value portfolio barbell outperforming. These are its two primary drivers. x.com
Crypto assets should reprice upward as purchasing power falls and nearly everything else costs more. Tokenization is still in its earliest stage and should reward patient investment in projects positioned to capture it; an altcoin portfolio centered on Ethereum and value-accrual tokens, with some Robinhood and Arc exposure, should outperform nearly everything over six to twelve months. Robinhood and Arc chains may drive much of the broader altcoin expansion. x.com x.com x.com x.com
Crypto is becoming the economic layer for autonomous machines, letting AI own assets, move money and coordinate onchain, which favors the infrastructure stack. Bittensor runs 128+ subnets as an open intelligence marketplace and the ASI Alliance builds agent services; Virtuals has 45,000+ agents and $480M+ of agentic GDP; Render and Aethir supply compute, with Aethir at ~95% utilization; and Coinbase's AgentKit and x402 provide agent wallets and machine-to-machine payments. x.com
Decentralized AI tokens like Bittensor and Venice should outperform anything else over the next 12-18 months. The AI bubble is still at an early stage, with AI stocks rising 500-1,000%, and the same should happen in crypto. x.com
A basket of established crypto names across narratives, all outperforming ETH and BTC over six months, should pay off as the market pumps, without chasing new tickers. The list: Zcash for privacy, Pepe for memes, Ethena for synthetic dollars, Aave for lending, Solana for L1, Uniswap and Aerodrome for DEXs, Chainlink for oracles, Pump for launchpads, Bittensor for AI, Hyperliquid for perps, and Ondo and Maple's SYRUP for real-world assets. x.com
AI and agent-related coins going vertical looks like one of crypto's most obvious narratives in some time, matching @CastilloTrading's view that most crypto AI plays, including NEAR, Fetch.ai and Render, can 10x. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said AI agents can't open a bank account but can open a crypto wallet; whether that happens at scale remains to be seen, but it explains capital rotating into the theme. Virtuals belongs in the group, as do Render and Sui, and Bittensor per a reply. x.com … Show more
Crypto's next cycle will be won by protocols with real users, revenue and utility that merge trading, banking, AI and cloud into one ecosystem. Hyperliquid has $1.06B of annualized fees, with HIP-3 adding stock perps and commodities; Aave holds $13.1B TVL; Chainlink secures $30.6B; Ondo brings treasuries on-chain. Ethena, Pendle, Maple, Bittensor, Virtuals, io.net, EigenLayer, Wormhole and Arbitrum round out the rails, though Ethena must survive weak funding and EigenLayer needs lasting revenue. … Show more
