The Silk Road Moment of Crypto + AI

At the end of yesterday's article, there was a comment:

"Currently, Web 3 is constrained by the inability to find application scenarios. I think perhaps sports betting and adult clusters could have some real application scenarios…"

This is a question I have been observing and anticipating for a long time. However, after waiting for so long in this cycle, I still have not discovered such a specific application scenario.

Stablecoins and stock tokens are two applications that have been hotly discussed this round, but they have actually existed for a long time and are not new in the crypto ecosystem. For retail investors, at least I have never made any money from stablecoin and stock token trading, so I have not held high expectations for these two applications. As for how high they can elevate the applications of this ecosystem in the future, specifically which asset prices they can push up to generate substantial returns, that can only be observed later.

I am optimistic about AI + Crypto, but this is a track, and to truly make money from this track, it ultimately needs to land on a specific application scenario. From this perspective, this track has not yet produced any blockbuster applications.

Seeing this comment, I suddenly thought of two things: one is the Silk Road, which played an important role in the history of Bitcoin; the other is a recently launched adult application AI Agent on Virtual.

Readers who have a slight understanding of Bitcoin's history have probably heard of the "Silk Road." Even if they haven't heard of the "Silk Road," they may have heard of its founder, Ross William Ulbricht, because Trump granted him a commutation just a day after taking office this year, as a move to fulfill his campaign promise.

The "Silk Road" was an early well-known dark web marketplace where illegal goods were traded, including some extremely unethical illegal items.

Due to the special nature of such transactions, there was an unusual preference and reliance on privacy, and at that time, Bitcoin, which had relatively good privacy features, met this demand. Thus, Ulbricht came up with the idea of using Bitcoin for dark web transactions and publicly posted his thoughts on a Bitcoin forum.

Shortly after his proposal was made public, Bitcoin was quickly adopted for transactions on the dark web and achieved significant results.

Regardless of whether we can accept it morally, the rise of Bitcoin transactions on the dark web played an immeasurable role in the early price surge of Bitcoin. The dark web can be said to be the first real scenario where Bitcoin achieved large-scale practical application.

In that era, without the support of such marginal application scenarios, hoping for mainstream application scenarios to use Bitcoin and push its price and consensus to later heights was basically zero probability and also extremely unrealistic.

By analogy, will AI + Crypto also face a similar predicament now?

Among the various application scenarios today, although I believe that the combination of crypto technology and AI can definitely create smoother and cooler experiences, it seems that the vast majority of Web 2 users do not care much about it.

This forces me to think whether AI + Crypto is also looking forward to its "Silk Road" moment?

Could it be that a blockbuster application in this track also appears in some marginal scenarios? Ultimately triggering this track to take the path of "rural encircling the city"?

So what are such marginal scenarios?

I think sports betting or more broadly, predictive betting applications count, but another category of more private, socially taboo, yet surprisingly large user base applications—adult applications—might also be worth paying attention to.

Just a couple of days ago, a project like this appeared on Virtual, and surprisingly, in the recent context of many projects breaking below their initial prices, this project actually rose after opening, which is quite eye-catching.

Of course, this is not to say that only these two types of application scenarios are worth paying attention to, but rather that perhaps in the AI + Crypto track, some niche-focused, socially taboo, yet highly necessary application scenarios should not be overlooked.

On Saturday, July 12th, at 7:30 PM, we will have an online discussion, and everyone can post their questions in the thread below:

https://x.com/Dao_Views/status/1941136815173566847