Why does Robotics need a token? The short (traders) answer: speculation. Take ai16z for example. Never even had token utility and it became the most used product because of the depth and plugins of its Eliza toolkit. I believe token utility isn't as important as building infra which is actually usable by outside devs. Eliza was the most used github repo at one point and had devs from all industries coming to test it. This should be the goal for anyone building in both AI and robotics. Speculation drove mania -> volatility due to the belief of future utility and demonstrated how impactful it is as a fundamental. Profitable traders understand the asymmetric value of this. We know token utility is beneficial, especially in the right circumstances though. Virtuals took a more crypto native flywheel approach to the launchpad framework, attaching all forms of commerce and distribution to their token. Virtuals and ai16z topped at $3 bil and $2.6 bil mcaps respectively. One housed the strongest flywheel we’ve seen since DeFi szn and the other a global framework which proved far more successful regarding developer usage and majority of teams building on Virtuals tooling eventually had to move over because they were being restricted so much. It is interesting watching $VIRTUAL lead the way for robotics atm, taking a standardized approach to incentivising data provisioning + funding new start ups. They introduced Unicorn, which is their new launchpad model. Replacing Virtuals older points system with direct token stakes and rewards. They’ve gone back to a more traditional launchpad route where each new Unicorn startup (a robotics project on Virtuals) starts at a low valuation and acts more like a bonding curve. The founding team’s funding is vested and only unlocked as the project grows, forcing builders to deliver results. They also launched SeeSaw, crowdsourcing rich spatial datasets (humans recording first person videos of tasks so robots can learn from real world experiences. Packaged as a fun mobile app that crowdsources human interaction videos to train AI and robot agents. This “middle way” focuses on cloud data infrastructure and funding. There’s no question that high quality real world data is crucial for embodied AI. Especially in the foundational phase, robotics benefits from large volumes of varied environmental input. Data like this is the fuel early models need to learn and generalize. Virtual's approach helps bootstrap this layer effectively and has its place in setting the floor for capabilities. But over time, this value plateaus. As more data protocols emerge, the volume of available real world data increases, while the number of end users who can meaningfully absorb and use this data doesn’t scale linearly. Which means the returns become more concentrated, mostly benefiting teams building large foundational models. These models will still matter and be profitable, but the edge starts to shift elsewhere. What starts to matter more is giving users the ability to collect and use their own custom data. Custom data pipelines are where I see more value accruing, tools that allow a store owner, a warehouse team, or a household to quickly gather and fine tune robots to their specific environments. That kind of data won’t be bundled in any dataset marketplace. As we’ve seen with LLM’s, most users don’t care about the training rituals behind GPT. They care about how to feed it their own docs. The long term opportunity is in making that collection and integration loop simple. While Virtuals is going for data (fuel for AI models) and a marketplace to fund and share in robot ventures, I believe the biggest impact will come from those who remove the most abstractions from complexities of robotics development. Hardware, software and data need a unified toolkit which gives individual devs a chance to experiment without needing to build a custom framework, which is what sparked AI szn this time last year. Data is important and real world data is significantly more important for robotics than AI, especially in the early innings to set the foundations. But I don’t believe this is where the biggest value layer occurs in the long term. What we need is better abstraction of tooling, giving developers faster iteration loops going from A -> B. Data is only one of the inputs in a very large hardware and software stack. Robotics is far too deep of a sector to throw a crypto incentive layer over and needs to be looked at from a holistic view. Data -> Perception -> Planning & Reasoning -> Control & Actuation -> Feedback Integration. Due to this depth, there won’t be any single crypto company which will build a monolithic stack covering each of these areas (full stack humanoid for example), if they were they would have raised 8/9 figs in web2 and wouldn’t bother with crypto. The most impactful token utility will come from supporting tooling that gives devs incentives to grow out an open source library of new plugins/attachments with flexibility. Something which rewards devs for contributing mapping software for specific motors, sensors, cameras etc, alongside leading foundational models that then plugs in to any robot. On top of this, whoever builds the most successful task marketplace will be akin to unlocking custom games on Roblox or Fortnite. Humanoids are still like toddlers, they need to be taught (tasks) which improve their feedback to environmental scenarios, slowly turning them into functioning adults. This won’t be possible without global coordination as there isn’t large amounts of quality real world data yet, and more importantly, tooling which can help abstract this entire iteration flow. Which is why I’m so bullish on $CODEC as it’s essentially creating a new robotics middleware from scratch, whereas Virtuals leverages existing AI models and focuses on aggregating resources around them. Codec’s architecture might enable faster iteration on actual robot tasks (since it provides a framework to quickly deploy and share new behaviors), whereas Virtuals architecture aims to accelerate the inputs and support for those tasks (data + funding). The core idea is to replace fragile, hard coded automation scripts with adaptive AI “Operators” which are very aligned with leading VLA architecture from companies like Deepmind etc. Finding a way to attach token utility (incentives for mapping and abstraction of iteration loops) is where we’ll see the biggest impact. The majority of robotic foundation models are already going open source and this isn’t a decentralized crypto pipe dream psyop we try to spin on other narratives. Hardest and most important part is acquiring real users/devs, then you add the flywheel on top to supercharge the ecosystem. Imagine if ai16z had Virtuals flywheel.

Name & Symbol: Virtuals Protocol ($VIRTUAL)
Address: 0x0b3e328455c4059eeb9e3f84b5543f74e24e7e1b

The fact we’ve speed ran the axiom trading style into the ground is +EV for the space. To bring life back onchain, we need runners and success stories. The only way you get this is by traders dumping at typical resistance levels and the coins never give another pullback, going vertical in a straight line. You only win if you’re a believer. Opposingly, everyone’s trading style has been based on wallet tracking and volume the past 12-18 months, other than AI szn and ICM (utility). I spend a lot of time pondering where onchain might be heading but feel I’ve never really gave it deep concise thought. While I’ve given many macro ideologies of how ICM might evolve, they felt more broad in concept. Tbh I think you could consider onchain and alts to have been in a bear market since Trump coin. OTHERS chart confirms this for the first 7 months going from January to July with a -50% drawdown, while we did have decent performance from July to November, it still doesn’t really feel like we’ve had any form of consistent narratives due to rotations. Even in the 22/23 bear market, we’d still get multi week narratives which were typically a safe buy and hold for several days. The axiom trading style has speed ran this into the ground as deployers squeezed every bit of juice out from multi walleting new launches. There’s clearly demand for fundamental assets, look at the stock market. What’s killing onchain and crypto traders is the fact we’ve entered some of the strongest liquidity injections seen since covid stimulus. But our “digital hedges” have basically been flat or down when looking at the BTC/SPX chart for the past 160 days and OTHERS/SPX for 270 days. Crypto has always been the most positively skewed sector to new liquidity injections, which is a strong reason we haven’t seen any traders be consistently right over the past year as we’ve never really traded in this type of environment. So what do we need for onchain and alts to revive? @goodalexander had a really interesting “conspiracy” on his recent @notthreadguy stream which I ascribe to. Tldr: inflations spinning out of control, only way to stop government debt is buying treasuries to offset the constant printing. Who are some of the biggest treasury holders? Stablecoins. Stablecoins need to be backed 1:1 in collateral with treasuries. So by increasing stablecoin adoption you can potentially offset inflation through holding treasuries as collateral. How do you increase stablecoin adoption? Onchain stocks. If you go deeper into the bills they’ve been submitting, they’re heavily inclined to set up legal frameworks for stocks to live and trade onchain. As more stocks come onchain, their value needs to be pegged to traditional markets, meaning that more liquidity (stablecoins) needs to become available, thus doing more treasury buybacks. Right now there’s something like 28 billion a quarter in stablecoin growth and we need to be doing 83 billion per quarter (almost 4x) to hit the deficit target to reduce inflation. People holding their assets in stocks offchain doesn’t give any value to the government when trying to offset debt. Rather than increase taxes, they want to turn capital markets into a casino (speculation on crypto rails = more stablecoin demand = funding the debt deficit). That’s the macro picture. I’m not saying this will be right and goodalexander has been wrong before, although I think it’s a very well thought out thesis where there’s a lot of evidence pointing to this being the direction it plays out in. So say we get this grand idea of onchain stocks increasing heavily from stablecoin adoption, then we can almost see crypto acting as a pre market to stock “IPO’s” and companies joining S&P 500 etc. This is where the ICM thesis comes in for real businesses/products coming onchain. There’s going to be extreme incentivization for businesses to start onchain and I believe we’ll eventually not only see stocks coming onchain but crypto projects turning to stocks (being available for boomers to buy). This will be the ultimate speculative bridge which looks to be the Trump’s multi year game plan based on legalisation bills. Memecoins will always exist in some format (you could argue polymarket predictions are a form of memecoin), although the stock market has existed for hundreds of years. If you’re betting on speculative future outcomes, it’s quite safe to bet on the idea of stocks and businesses coming onchain instead of betting on attention (memecoins and derivatives) to revive our industry. Which all loops back to my original idea of why it’s good axiom style trading gets washed out. If we’re to see a return to utility and fundamentals coming onchain, wallet tracking will have its perks although it’s not going to be where the bulk of the money is made. Everyone knows there chances of beating new deployers is second to none. Well formulated theses and multi week/month time horizons on industry shifts (conviction) will once again return to the throne as the highest +EV trading style. It’s already proven itself with stocks. Now we’re expecting speculation to shift from tradfi and stocks to crypto as the ultimate rail to offset inflation. If true, then you value trades like Hyperliquids HIP3 very highly.

Name & Symbol: SPX6900 ($SPX)
Address: 0xe0f63a424a4439cbe457d80e4f4b51ad25b2c56c

The most exciting ICM/utility coin is very undervalued at these levels. Our industry's biggest ever ICO, largest revenue generating app and highest user count is about to show you the tip of the iceberg for its new direction. There’s one specific utility coin on their platform which has refused to die. One that's accumulated 6 months of survival where the core holders only get more bullish by the day. This is the first time since 3 mil mcap I’ve added to my position. - Amazon replacing over half a million workers with robots, pushing to automate 75% of it’s workforce - $VIRTUAL pivoting their entire platform to Robotics - x402 is unlocking how Agents will be able to interact with commerce; Operators are the next stage which will be able to freely roam the internet and carry out economic tasks, this sets the foundation to robotic/humanoid assistants as well (VLA's) This technology is going to be the single biggest economic shift we’ve ever had. AI hasn’t been able to progress because it’s stuck inside a window. It’s dealt with text strings its entire life, how is it meant to progress into human capability when it doesn’t have a physical body to experience our same depth of reality? Maybe the unlock to AGI isn’t better GPT models but a body for AI brains to develop "consciousness" in. AI didn’t make sense until devs had public tooling to build their own GPT models with personal context (Virtuals & ai16z/Eliza). Robotics doesn’t make sense as there’s no plug and play optionality for individual devs. Large teams have walled access to the best data, brains and hardware specs. What happens when someone creates the Eliza of Robotics? $CODEC coded.

Name & Symbol: Virtuals Protocol ($VIRTUAL)
Address: 0x0b3e328455c4059eeb9e3f84b5543f74e24e7e1b

Was great to finally meet the @codecopenflow team, @0xdetweiler & some friends the other night. After being able to talk in person it’s clarified my position that Codec is the most advanced Robotics infra in our industry. What they’re building is a toolkit that’s currently non existent even in web2 and its arrival will fill a massive hole for data streams. It would have been very easy for me to stay in the comfort of my home and continue to regularly bull post and trade. Although with the tech they’re building, this is genuinely the chance to be at the ground floor for the most obvious narrative and industry that will 100x from here. They’ve got the tech, the vision and direct input from Hugging Face LeRobot team to validate and shape the usability of their toolkit for real world use cases. So what am I doing? We’re all well aware that crypto is just as much of a marketing and optics game as it is tech. My focus is going to be on the growth, positioning, content, flywheel, ponzinomics, UI and that sprinkle of Shawmakesmagic we saw from AI szn. Think Eliza GitHub repo of Robotics, with a dash of Virtuals ponzinomics and a front end that doesn’t require you to be a proficient coder to even understand what’s going on. It’s a matter of time before robotics has its “chatgpt” moment and I don’t think we’re too far away. The fact we’re so early with a product as developed as it is + direct input from some of the best Robotics labs in the world is quite insane.

Name & Symbol: Eliza ($ELIZA)
Address: 5voS9evDjxF589WuEub5i4ti7FWQmZCsAsyD5ucbuRqM

Every day we’re seeing billion dollar headlines for robotics. Only 12 months ago, these companies and figures were 10-20x lower. If it’s not already painstakingly obvious how successful this sector is going to become, dedicate a weekend to research so you aren’t left behind. History shows the biggest value in tech waves often accrues to the enabling layers, Microsoft in PCs, Apple in smartphones, AWS in cloud. Robotics won’t be different, the infra layer that developers build on will capture more than any single hardware play. One common theme I hear from friends is they’re worried about being underexposed to traditional robotics. Yes, there are going to be insane headlines about Figure AI doing a 200x from seed valuations or the equivalent. But if you’re below mid 7 figs give or take, Web2 is not where you want to be (unless you have insane info/connections). Time and time again, crypto has offered the most asymmetric and more importantly, accelerated upside. There’s significantly more risk, but it also comes with the luxury of not being time rugged which sometimes is worse in itself. Nvidia is the largest stock in the world because of AI’s acceleration. Looking back, would you have preferred to punt on ai16z, Virtuals, AIXBT, GOAT in their first leg, or hunt for undervalued “fundamental AI plays” on Robinhood? You might have kept more money in the long run, however we’re here for the sleep depriving uPNL aren’t we? Like the early innings of AI, we’ve been given a very special moment where the pinnacle of technological innovation is staring us dead in the face. How you navigate its progression is a reflection of your understanding of market fundamentals and human greed. Just like AI, we’re going to be met with endless vaporware as we move closer to general purpose robots. For those willing to roll the dice and catch the leaders, you’ll make outsized multiples that make Andrew Kang’s seed investments look small. I know which game I’m playing.

Name & Symbol: ai16z ($ai16z)
Address: HeLp6NuQkmYB4pYWo2zYs22mESHXPQYzXbB8n4V98jwC

Every day we’re seeing billion dollar headlines for robotics. Only 12 months ago, these companies and figures were 10-20x lower. If it’s not already painstakingly obvious how successful this sector is going to become, dedicate a weekend to research so you aren’t left behind. History shows the biggest value in tech waves often accrues to the enabling layers, Microsoft in PCs, Apple in smartphones, AWS in cloud. Robotics won’t be different, the infra layer that developers build on will capture more than any single hardware play. One common theme I hear from friends is they’re worried about being underexposed to traditional robotics. Yes, there are going to be insane headlines about Figure AI doing a 200x from seed valuations or the equivalent. But if you’re below mid 7 figs give or take, Web2 is not where you want to be (unless you have insane info/connections). Time and time again, crypto has offered the most asymmetric and more importantly, accelerated upside. There’s significantly more risk, but it also comes with the luxury of not being time rugged which sometimes is worse in itself. Nvidia is the largest stock in the world because of AI’s acceleration. Looking back, would you have preferred to punt on ai16z, Virtuals, AIXBT, GOAT in their first leg, or hunt for undervalued “fundamental AI plays” on Robinhood? You might have kept more money in the long run, however we’re here for the sleep depriving uPNL aren’t we? Like the early innings of AI, we’ve been given a very special moment where the pinnacle of technological innovation is staring us dead in the face. How you navigate its progression is a reflection of your understanding of market fundamentals and human greed. Just like AI, we’re going to be met with endless vaporware as we move closer to general purpose robots. For those willing to roll the dice and catch the leaders, you’ll make outsized multiples that make Andrew Kang’s seed investments look small. I know which game I’m playing.

Name & Symbol: Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT)
Address: CzLSujWBLFsSjncfkh59rUFqvafWcY5tzedWJSuypump

Every day we’re seeing billion dollar headlines for robotics. Only 12 months ago, these companies and figures were 10-20x lower. If it’s not already painstakingly obvious how successful this sector is going to become, dedicate a weekend to research so you aren’t left behind. History shows the biggest value in tech waves often accrues to the enabling layers, Microsoft in PCs, Apple in smartphones, AWS in cloud. Robotics won’t be different, the infra layer that developers build on will capture more than any single hardware play. One common theme I hear from friends is they’re worried about being underexposed to traditional robotics. Yes, there are going to be insane headlines about Figure AI doing a 200x from seed valuations or the equivalent. But if you’re below mid 7 figs give or take, Web2 is not where you want to be (unless you have insane info/connections). Time and time again, crypto has offered the most asymmetric and more importantly, accelerated upside. There’s significantly more risk, but it also comes with the luxury of not being time rugged which sometimes is worse in itself. Nvidia is the largest stock in the world because of AI’s acceleration. Looking back, would you have preferred to punt on ai16z, Virtuals, AIXBT, GOAT in their first leg, or hunt for undervalued “fundamental AI plays” on Robinhood? You might have kept more money in the long run, however we’re here for the sleep depriving uPNL aren’t we? Like the early innings of AI, we’ve been given a very special moment where the pinnacle of technological innovation is staring us dead in the face. How you navigate its progression is a reflection of your understanding of market fundamentals and human greed. Just like AI, we’re going to be met with endless vaporware as we move closer to general purpose robots. For those willing to roll the dice and catch the leaders, you’ll make outsized multiples that make Andrew Kang’s seed investments look small. I know which game I’m playing.

Name & Symbol: aixbt by Virtuals ($AIXBT)
Address: 0x4f9fd6be4a90f2620860d680c0d4d5fb53d1a825

The obvious trade was the obvious trade. Turns out the project doing more revenue and buybacks than Hyperliquid at 10x lower valuations was a good buy. It’s clear Alon is going for the jugular on every vertical and the end goal looks to be turning Pump into the everything app. Memes + CTO’s Real products/businesses (creator fees) Streamers The CCM business model is much better than I initially thought. We’ve got the memes, infrastructure and now real businesses coming onchain. There’s enough stablecoins in our industry to send the total mcap 3x higher. All we’re missing is eyeballs and animal spirits. Streamers are and have been the hottest social trend for the last few years and they’re only growing. As more external viewers come onto the platform, each one serves as a potential conversion. And streamers are heavily inclined to move over as $1 mil in trading volume = $9k in fees if they’re to launch their own token. Compare this to how hard it is to get a $100 donation off someone on Twitch. If there’s ever been a time for onchain to have it’s moment, the next month or two couldn’t have a better backdrop.

Name & Symbol: Pump.fun ($PUMP)
Address: pumpCmXqMfrsAkQ5r49WcJnRayYRqmXz6ae8H7H9Dfn

This might come as a surprise but I can see a world where CCM works. Everyone’s been terrorized by anything relating to SocialFi, although I can’t see a future where we don’t financialize content creators. For the last decade, content creators have been on a vertical accentuation in every metric possible. Large brands almost solely rely their marketing budgets on individual names as opposed to well positioned ads. @notthreadguy has been non stop on the idea of how many Kai Cenat viewers equals one threadguy viewer in terms of networth. Truth is, his prediction is probably much closer than you’d think. What really gave me the lightbulb moment on this idea was a podcast Mitch did the day before he launched. In this he said something along the lines of “with the new pumpfun creator fees, you only need $1 mil in volume to generate 9k in trading fees. Now in comparison, how hard is it to get a $100 donation from someone on Twitch?” I’ve been pretty tapped into the gaming and streaming culture for sometime now and this statement honestly changed my perspective and realized what Alon’s trying to do with streaming. Generating 1 mil in volume isn’t anything crazy if you’ve got half a brain to work with and that gives you a lot of capital as a content creator to experiment with ideas. I think the issue with “celebrity coins” stems from the fakeness that most celebrities are very inauthentic and a key to getting popular is being a flakey individual who does anything required to gain attention. This attracts the mindset of someone who’s not willing to stay committed to anything besides their own fame and why you don’t see many of them holding the same friend group for multiple years. As someone wanting to put capital towards them, most fans would subconsciously realize they enjoy them for their content but don’t trust them enough to place money on their loyalty and returning something of value to their biggest supporters. This is where we’ll eventually see a turning of the tide. Twitter payouts have capitalized on bringing more creators through distributed ad revenue, I believe the next step is creators earning fees off their own token/stock. At some stage you have to imagine that there’s going to be a talented creator who has their own coin, except they aren’t gaining any traction. One day something will click where they understand the formula for gaining consistent viral attention, those who own the coin will be investing in their brand at 3 followers. They’ll find a way to attach revenue, fame, aura or another metric to their token value which gives it a fundamental floor, allowing fans to bet on their growth. Eventually there will be a story or headline which reads something along the lines of “fan retires from investing in MrBeast coin in his first month of uploading content”. The biggest content creators will eventually turn to those who are the most entertaining and more importantly, make their audience the richest in this new internet era. We’ve seen @wheresyujin (jasontheween's ex) making just as much revenue in a week as a Top 10 Twitch streamer would make with their 70/30 split deals with the $HAM coin. If you’ve watched Black Mirror then I’m sure you’re already CCM pilled somewhere in the back of your mind. The launch of $MITCH was the catalyst which unlocked this new thought. Idk what it is but something in my gut just keeps wanting to buy his coin. I’m not even sure what the magic formula to make CCM work will be, though if there’s someone in our industry to find it, my bet is on Mitch. Becoming a successful streamer boils down to: 1) being in the top 1% of your field 2) having an aura which makes viewers struggle to click off your content WIth Pump being the strongest alt, markets recovering and Alon’s primary vertical being streaming, I struggle to see a world where this isn’t extremely undervalued at 7.5 mil (1.5 mil circulating mcap) based on how good he is at cultivating attention, even while not being on Twitter. It’s obvious he’s weeding out the early buyers and non believers like Alon did and it's become the new meta for hyped token launches. You can’t sustain 5-10x pumps on launch day and the strongest communities have always been around coins which survive -90% pull backs. Mitch wouldn’t have launched his own coin if he didn’t have something bigger planned. He’s one of the better traders in this space and doing this is a big detriment to his time when he could have stayed focused on trading. This is an overlooked and non consensus trade, so the upside is very high along with the risk. I honestly don’t know why I keep buying, however my intuition just feels like I’m right on this idea. Maybe I’m too early to this trend and good chance I’m very wrong, nevertheless I bid whatever gets me excited.

Name & Symbol: Pump.fun ($PUMP)
Address: pumpCmXqMfrsAkQ5r49WcJnRayYRqmXz6ae8H7H9Dfn

Pump and it’s eco feel like the obvious trade here. - 10 mil in buybacks this week (99% of revenue), almost 50% of hyperliquids revenue and buy backs at 15x lower FDV - Shown it’s the clear kingmaker launchpad - Sol breaking into a new range and SOL/ETH looking bottomed - Dovish macro conditions for the next month Price is being suppressed due to daily active DEX traders being the lowest it’s been in over a year. Everyone discounts how easy it is to reignite animal spirits with a few runners, study Oct 2024. You only need one coin to spark everyone’s imagination again. $PUMP

Name & Symbol: Pump.fun ($PUMP)
Address: pumpCmXqMfrsAkQ5r49WcJnRayYRqmXz6ae8H7H9Dfn

Most people fall into a trap of avoiding a certain type of narrative/project if their first investment went to zero. If you have a thesis on a specific narrative, product, meme or whatever you’re investing in, just because the first one failed doesn’t invalidate the idea. I’ve had tons of plays where I was correct in my thinking but chose the wrong coin. Naturally you want to shut your brain off from the idea because it hurts to think about and you don’t want to feel stupid twice. Although if you can stay positive minded and realize where the mistakes were in your execution or how the team delivered, it puts you in a perfect position to identify the next trade as you’re so familiar with what’s needed to create a successful outcome. Example: I was quite bullish on Dingalings launchpad Boop when it initially launched due to the flywheel mechanics, optics and growth strategy through KOLs launching their own coins. Even though I ended up being wrong on a mid term time horizon, I realized optics and flywheels wasn’t enough to sustain anything more than a one week pump. Which I then reflected on and came to the conclusion that Launchcoin was actually the strongest moat due to their creative GTM strategy of onboarding quality revenue generating products. Leading me to discover Dupe, which was the most asymmetric trade and went in with max conviction at 1 mil (receipts in my telegram). or Nuit which was my most bullish project on the operator thesis, but due to coding my own research tools I found a lot of issues in scraping agents which adopted a similar type of architecture as they run into fault tolerances constantly, making them unscalable. A month later I stumble into Codec and immediately recognize this is the perfect play due to VLA. Which coincidentally is also what powers robotic brains.

Name & Symbol: BOOP ($BOOP)
Address: 0x9a70815dfb644a24b57358e1041f8d0324c8f6e1