Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow
ai16z, do you remember this name?
If you do, it means you experienced the AI coin boom in the cryptocurrency world at the end of 2024. If you don’t remember, that’s normal; the AI Agent token category has been quiet for a long time.
Crypto x AI, in the current version where AI tools are gradually being implemented and advancing rapidly, seems too much like a pseudo-concept and an old-fashioned toy.
Today, Shaw Walters, the founder of the Eliza OS project, published a very long article, the gist of which is that the ai16z token is completely dead, the foundation has closed, there will be no buybacks, and token holders should handle it themselves.
He suggests you either sell it or "find a group of people to hype it up," but don't expect him to do anything further.
The tone of this letter does not sound like a founder announcing the termination of a project with dignity; it sounds more like someone who, after berating everyone, angrily slams the door. He refers to the crypto community as "a bunch of spoiled crybabies," saying there are law firms suing him on behalf of token holders.
Meanwhile, the Eliza OS Foundation couldn't afford to fight in court and spent all the remaining funds.
Shaw also mentioned that he once had 25 million dollars worth of ai16z tokens, didn’t sell a single one, and watched them go to zero; now he lives on savings in a shabby little bedroom in San Francisco, writing code every day.
From his perspective, he perhaps believes he has been developing something idealistic in a murky market, ultimately left with feelings of ruin, disappointment, and anger.
The author has no intention of judging these personal emotions. However, standing at the crossroads of shifting hot spots, shifting industry focus, and the rise of AI, the shutdown of Eliza OS inevitably evokes a sense that crypto x AI indeed got up early and missed the boat.
One Step Ahead, Immersed in the Wave
In October 2024, ai16z launched crowdfunding on DAOs.fun, aiming to raise 420.69 SOL, equivalent to about 75,000 dollars, to create an investment fund managed autonomously by AI.
420.69, anyone familiar with crypto culture knows this is a meme number. From the choice of fundraising amount, the tone of this endeavor was already set.
But it really took off. In less than three months, ai16z's market capitalization soared to 2.6 billion dollars. It also spawned an entire category, with GOAT in the lead, VIRTUAL following, and various Agent concept tokens springing up, with the entire AI Agent track growing from zero to nearly ten billion dollars.
In concept, crypto was indeed one step ahead. What was the situation in the AI market at the end of 2024?
ChatGPT had just turned two, often criticized for various hallucinations in its responses; Claude still didn't have tools for directly operating computers, and most people's understanding of "AI Agent" remained at the conceptual level. Yet the crypto market had already set a price for this concept.
But there was a detail that not many people paid attention to at the time.
Less than a week after ai16z launched, some crypto media published reports questioning whether the core AI Agent of the ai16z project, which claimed to make autonomous investment decisions, known as "Marc AIndreessen," was actually being operated by people rather than truly the Agent thinking for itself.
This skepticism later occurred with the well-known crypto analysis Agent aiIxbt.
At that time, such doubts were unlikely to cause any ripples or FUD. The market cap continued to rise, the community kept shouting, and new AI Agent tokens continued to be issued... Looking back, this may be the most precise embodiment of the entire crypto AI narrative.
True and false do not matter. In a climate of overflowing liquidity, a leading version of the narrative is enough to spark a speculative wave.
Conceptually true, with the right direction, but the token existed before the product, and the price existed before the technology; this is precisely the essence of crypto being one step ahead.
The Future Has Arrived, Yet It Has Nothing to Do with You
In 2026, the AI Agent really arrived.
In the West, there are CodeX and Claude, while in the East, there are competitors like Workbuddy that are more suited to the domestic context. Looking back at the hype surrounding crypto AI, which found its narrative in whitepapers—such as automatically analyzing market trends, processing workflows, and monitoring public sentiment—these have already become a reality.
This may be one of the few narratives in the crypto industry, aside from stablecoins, that has grounded itself.
But those who are realizing them are a new batch. They are Anthropic, OpenAI, and those teams coding in San Francisco and Hangzhou. Money flows to aggregation platforms like OpenRouter, to the GPU bills of cloud service providers, and to each genuine API call.
Another line from Shaw’s long article evokes endless reflection:
“There are no such problems over there in AI. The people over there are optimistic, powerful, building the future instead of tearing each other down. Those are my kind of people.” A person who once ignited the crypto AI Agent narrative concluded that this industry is incompatible with AI?
Objectively, the current successful AI applications or large models really have no reason to issue tokens.
Anthropic charges fees through subscriptions and API calls, while OpenRouter's transfer station business generates over a hundred million in annual revenue. These companies have never issued tokens or built DAOs, but their business models work; developers vote with their feet, and the bills are the best consensus mechanism.
On the other hand, the situation for crypto AI projects is quite harsh. When token prices are supported, it seems like everything is available: the treasury has money, the community has people, and the narrative is hot. Once prices collapse, everything disappears simultaneously.
Developers leave because the purchasing power for wages paid in tokens has shrunk by ninety percent, and the community turns into a rights protection group. Those who genuinely want to get things done may find that the project can't even afford to hire a single engineer.
Ironically, the Eliza framework in his hands isn't dead. The code is still updating, and companies are discussing collaborations on it. An open-source AI framework can survive without issuing tokens, whether through selling services or being acquired; the path is much wider than that of tokens.
What's more remorseful is that the open-source AI framework Eliza, which originated in crypto, recently had active contributors who were actually Claude.
An AI developer and project that does not tie itself to tokens may be worth more in the 2026 market than when it was tied to tokens.
Embrace Change
As a crypto practitioner, watching once-thriving projects fall one by one is indeed disheartening.
But feeling dismayed does not mean being completely pessimistic.
The narrative around crypto AI has indeed shattered into pieces. But what has shattered is the path of "issuing tokens for AI concepts," while the possibility between crypto and AI has not completely severed.
The few projects that are still alive are doing things completely different from ai16z. For example, Bittensor is building a decentralized AI computing market, and Render is creating a distributed GPU rendering network.
They all coordinate real computing resources using tokens, and there is still a certain market for this, though it has less premium and persuasiveness without a bull market.
Additionally, on-chain data analysis, vulnerability scanning, whale wallet tracking, public opinion monitoring, and contract strategies for DEX are gradually being fulfilled and playing a role with AI in the crypto circle.
In 2026, a professional crypto trader opening Hyperliquid will likely already have a strategy window supported by Claude or GPT open beside them. This also means that the relationship between crypto and AI has not ended, but the direction needs to reverse.
AI empowering all scenarios has already become a political correctness; crypto can equally be covered. As for how big the crypto pie can still be, that might depend on when BTC can recover.
Personally, what should be done more is to embrace change. A developer shedding the burden of tokens today is worth much more in the AI world than what tokens can offer; and a crypto player who sincerely embraces AI will clearly gain much more than the previous rough-and-tumble model.
Being in crypto often means seeing the direction one step ahead, or perhaps we just got our positions reversed.
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