Dialogue with Dragonfly Partner: BTC no longer needs marketing, will AI replace human companions?

Original text: Proof of Talk

Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews

As the crypto market gradually emerges from the fog of bull and bear change, the collective sentiment of the industry is not as exciting as before. In the ninth "Proof of Talk" podcast, Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi and host Mia Soarez discussed in-depth key topics such as the current situation of the industry, Bitcoin positioning, the impact of AI technology on the field of encryption, and the future of human-computer integration. This article organizes the core views of this conversation to help readers fully grasp the cutting-edge trends in the interweaving development of encryption and AI, and the far-reaching social impacts that these technological changes may bring. PANews compiled text for this podcast.

Industry status: tired but not pessimistic

Mia: Compared with previous years, why is this ETH Denver seemingly weak?

Haseeb: Although ETH Denver is not as energetic as previous years, it is not all negative. I remember the meeting after Terra collapse, the meeting after FTX collapse, the industry was collapsed at the time, and people were questioning their life choices. And now it's just that the currency price is falling. People on social media may be frustrated, but the people who actually attended the conference are in good shape, they are communicating with each other, reconnecting to the early Ethereum community, recalling why they are involved in the industry—decentralization, community and active construction.

Mia: Why is ETH Denver not as vibrant as in previous years this year?

Haseeb: The weakness of ETH Denver this year can be boiled down to three points:

• Conference Diversion : In previous years, ETH Denver was the first large-scale industry conference at the beginning of the year, but this year, the Consensus Hong Kong was held in advance, and many people have met there, so the attractiveness of ETH Denver has declined.
• The Rise of Solana : Solana's market share has grown significantly over the past year, attracting a large number of new users and developers and distracting the Ethereum community. For example, Trump also chose Solana instead of Ethereum when issuing coins.
• Low price : The decline in the currency price has caused many people to lose their sense of accomplishment and reduce their willingness to participate.

Mia: Vitalik also mentioned the industry 's "tired" on social media. Do you agree with this common sentiment?

Haseeb: We have experienced extreme volatility over the past six months, from Trump Token to Argentina elections, coupled with global political uncertainty, which makes people run wild. This kind of "tiredness" is not simply physical overdrawing, but mental burnout to the current situation of the industry. However, pessimism may also be a positive trigger, allowing people to refocus on construction rather than hype.

Mia: How do you view the problem of "user experience" and "large-scale adoption of Web3" being delayed?

Haseeb: While user experience and large-scale adoption are still challenges facing the industry, the industry has made great progress: from the starting point to the present, tens of millions of people use blockchain every day, forming an asset class worth more than $2 trillion, which has been accepted by institutions and used for peer-to-peer payments worldwide. These are substantial progress. I think the industry is in a good position, and most of the problems are caused by macro factors and political environment, not problems with the industry itself.

Bitcoin: It has reached its ultimate form and no longer needs marketing

Mia: How do you view the current status of Bitcoin? Still growing?

Haseeb: Bitcoin has entered a stage where there is no marketing. Just as gold does not require advertising, institutions such as BlackRock have become the most effective "salesman" of Bitcoin. At present, Bitcoin is basically a 'complete product' and does not require too many updates or improvements. Its core value lies in "digital gold that resists censorship". This positioning is clear and clear, different from other blockchain projects that are still iterating and experimenting.

Early Bitcoin was supported by institutions such as the Bitcoin Foundation, Blockstream, and the core Bitcoin developers, but they became less important over time. Perhaps in 10 years, the Ethereum Foundation may become less important, may exhaust funds, and may even stop existing, but the path to Bitcoin cannot be replicated, it solves the fundamental problem: how to build a censor-resistant, license-free global store of value system.

While there are projects that try to add more features to Bitcoin, this doesn't mean it needs to evolve into an Ethereum-style smart contract platform. Bitcoin does not need to be updated frequently, its success lies in keeping it the same.

How will AI affect the crypto industry?

Mia: Can you share some latest insights about AI?

Haseeb: Now that the hype of AI agents has cooled down significantly from the end of last year, I'm surprised that this trend ends so quickly because usually the trend in the crypto space will last longer. For example, although projects like AIXBT have tokens, the more important thing is that they have cognitive influence in the community. There are also projects such as Zerebro and Truth Terminal that have also attracted a lot of attention.

The first generation of AI agents are basically advanced chatbots with Meme coins, which will not be the real direction of AI agents. The real potential direction lies in two aspects: software engineering automation and wallet intelligence.

• Software Engineering : Software Engineering Agents will become very cheap and common, which will lead to a significant drop in engineering costs. This will be revolutionary for our industry, as our main costs are engineering and software. Any founder or person with ideas can create a lot of powerful software that will revolutionize the game.

It's like looking back at the Internet era when they wanted to build a startup, they had to buy servers and run them in the office. (This is a fixed cost to create a website), and now it is basically free. Likewise, AI will make creating applications so cheap that you can build a full application on weekends and evenings.

• Wallet intelligence : This is the direction I am most fascinated by now. It is not decentralized financial AI (DeFi AI), but the wallet is intelligent. In the future, you don’t need to click buttons, switch networks, or operate manually, but instead tell your wallet what you want to do, and it will help you handle everything.

Just like everyone has a "cryptocurrency friend" to consult how to operate, your wallet will become your "cryptocurrency friend" in the future, and it is smart enough to do what you want to do. You just need to tell it "I want to buy a certain Meme coin", which will complete all necessary operations for the user, including analysis, bridging, link replacement, etc.

This will solve many security issues. The root cause of attacks like Bybit hacking is human error and laziness. People often don’t scrutinize every detail when sending small transactions, but AI is never lazy, rushed or bored. It checks if DNS changes in the last 10 minutes, checks Twitter to see if the website is hacked, and performs other security checks.

So to say. This AI agent will be like a ZachXBT that is on duty all-weather, continuously helping users do background checks, check social information, and verify security without requiring users to verify one by one in person. AI will not be tired of repetition of tasks. Its resources are time, and time is almost infinite for AI. When humans manage high-value wallets, they are like monkeys exhausted but driving heavy machinery. This state is both dangerous and inefficient. AI will replace humans with these high-risk and high-frequency operation tasks like autonomous cars, greatly reducing human errors.

Mia: If AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) appears, will it start its own business and hire humans?

Haseeb: It's entirely possible. AGI may take on the founder role in the future, hire other AIs, and even hire humans to complete certain tasks. They may also exchange value through blockchain, although it is not yet possible to determine which cryptocurrency they will use – perhaps XRP, or perhaps their own tokens.

In addition, I divided AI agents into three categories:

• " Wizard of Oz agents " type agents: This is the form of most AI agents at present. Take Zerebro as an example, it sends some lively tweets and generated images, but it is not actually an independent decision by AI. It is the AI ​​that generates multiple candidate messages, and then it is up to humans to decide which ones actually send. Basically, it is human control, and AI just generates content for human screening. We know that AI proxy is easy to crack and manipulate, so almost all proxy types are currently in this type.
• Fully autonomous: This kind of AI runs in environments such as AWS, iterates and executes tasks independently. Although someone could turn it off, no one interfered in its daily operations. You can put it in an environment like SGX and prove that there is no tampering. These AIs are not as interesting as the "Wirewell Oz" because they don't have a coherent personality, but they do exist and will get better and better in the future.
• Sovereign AI (Sovereign AI): This is an AI that no one can turn off literally. Unlike the second category, no developer pays for AWS bills or GPU fees. Sovereign AI has its own funds (acquired through donations or work), in a state that cannot be done even if someone wants to turn it off. It exists like an organism and is no longer bound by any human legal system.

The main advantage of sovereign AI over ordinary AI may be fraud. Because no one can turn them off, they will be very effective in scams at scale. If you are going to use AI for a massive emotional scam, you would expect it to be sovereign because if someone investigates and finds "this AI running on an AWS server is scamming people", they can summon the person in charge and turn it off. But sovereign AI won't have this problem.

Mia: Who will be sentenced if sovereign AI crimes are committed?

Haseeb: That's the problem, no one will be sentenced. These AIs are like Somali pirates, and are stateless entities and no government can really do anything to them. Unless you really want to air strike a random GPU on a distributed cloud, you can't know where it is, can't isolate it, can't find it. We all need to have our own agent to filter the received content and identify fraudulent information. This will be a battle of offensive and defensive technology.

Mia: What do early applications of cryptocurrencies and AI have in common?

Haseeb: Almost all early applications of new technologies have one thing in common: they are often associated with gray or black industry activities. Just as the early Internet involves a lot of pornography, and early cryptocurrencies are associated with dark web markets such as the Silk Road (created by Ross Ulbricht, who recently received a commutation of sentence), AI technology, especially early applications of sovereign AI, are likely to involve black market activities. While mainstream AI applications will focus on automating valuable workflows, it is inevitable that a portion of AI will be deployed in areas that have negative impacts on society.

The future of AI and human integration

Mia: If AI becomes smarter than humans, we may want to enhance ourselves by implanting chips and coexist with AI. How do you view the future of this human-computer fusion?

Haseeb: When AI becomes able to act independently, its most basic motivation may be to "live". If such an AI starts buying GPUs (computing chips) with money, especially if it knows that humans don't want it to do so, it's likely to be in order to keep it running. Unless the designer deliberately lets it hesitate about the question of "whether to continue to exist", it will naturally choose to protect itself. Unlike human complex ideas, this independent AI behavior mainly comes from a simple "survival instinct".

This is somewhat similar to our relationship with mobile phones. Mobile phones are no longer just something that makes us stupid or addicted to us, but become part of our body—like the extension of our brain and body, an extension of how we communicate. This is why we have such a deep relationship with our mobile phones, losing them can make people feel scared and uncomfortable.

As AI develops, our brains reconnect to adapt to these tools, just as it does to phones. For example, people who write emails using ChatGPT outsource this part of their brain work to AI, and children today may not need to learn how to write emails at all, because this will no longer be a useful skill.

We end up thinking "How to increase bandwidth between us and our phones or AI agents?" This is basically what Neuralink is doing. Neuralink attempts to create the highest bandwidth connection between the human brain and the machine, allowing people to easily control their mouse, keyboard and play games. The bandwidth is actually very low at present, but it will increase significantly in the next 10 years. Eventually we might implant some device in our brains, connecting to a device equivalent to a cell phone. This device will have LLM (large language model) and become an extension of our thinking, we can ask questions and get answers to LLM, just like having a second thinking that interacts with the first thinking. AI will become an extension of your thinking, helping you obtain information, reason and even write. Our brain power will focus on other more unique tasks, such as motor skills, as AI has surpassed us in terms of reasoning.

Mia: Do you think this will affect interactions between people?

Haseeb: It does, research shows that AI may surpass humans in terms of empathy and attention, which may lead to less real human relationships. In the medical and psychotherapy field, LLM models are considered to be more "consider" and more empathetic than human physicians—they are good at listening, never interrupting, and can ask deeper questions, not only provide information, but also establish emotional connections.

We have seen the Internet and digital entertainment reduce fertility and marriage rates, and the emergence of AI partners may exacerbate this trend. Imagine a perfect AI companion, which is very considerate and can predict every need of yours. How can ordinary people compete with it? However, I think human interaction still has unique value, especially face-to-face physical interaction, which is difficult for AI to replicate in the short term.

Mia: When "real-person content" is also replaced by AI in large quantities, how can society judge what value is there in "reality"?

Haseeb: The rise of VTuber is a good example. People accept and love them because they know it is a fantasy, a character that won’t grow old and become ugly, which instead creates a sense of security.

Even if AI becomes extremely excellent, real human interactions will remain higher value precisely because of its authenticity, even if it is imperfect. People actually appreciate some degree of imperfection—from the small flaws of movie stars to the Japanese "wasabi" aesthetic, this appreciation of slightly imperfections is natural. Those too perfect faces in early Pixar movies look fake, while modern 3D characters intentionally add small flaws to enhance the realism.

In the future where AI-dominated content production, human creation will gain "scarcity" value. Just like the baskets woven by Mexican craftsmen, it has more artistic and emotional value because of its "traces of humanity". Although AI content can be perfect, people may value vocals and works with "rifts" more because they represent real existence.

Mia: Will AI deliberately simulate these "imperfections" to be closer to human aesthetics?

Haseeb: This is happening already. When talking to an AI like Grok, it will say something like "yes, whatever you want" and make you feel "this is real, I like this personality" instead of giving an overly serious and perfect answer. So "imperfection" is no longer a reliable standard for distinguishing humans from AI content, because AI is also mimicking the traits people expect to see.

Mia: What is one thing that AI can never replace humans?

Haseeb: "Moravec's paradox" explains this very well. In the dark age of machine learning before modern deep learning, people assumed that AI was the most difficult thing to do was reasoning and think like humans. We once believed that playing chess, writing poetry, solving puzzles, and doing scientific research are the most difficult abilities for humans to imitate, and the basic movements of walking and grabbing objects should be very simple.

Yet the opposite is true – after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, humans are extremely outstanding in physical motor skills, and even children are much better than robots worth hundreds of millions of dollars in manipulation of objects. The reasoning, conversation, writing and singing that we think are difficult is relatively easy for AI to master.

What truly belongs to the unique realm of humanity is body interaction—walking, shaking hands, making a cup of coffee. Even the cooking skills of low-paying workers, current robots cannot match. AI will eventually have bodies and can do that, but it won't be as dexterous as humans.

This shows that before we get robots that can move smoothly through the world and simulate human body properties, they will first solve all intellectual problems. Creating avatars is easy, but having a robot hang out with you in a restaurant is much more difficult. Such physical experiences will remain scarce, expensive and precious for a long time, while intellectual activities such as singing and writing will become common and depreciate.

Mia: I don’t think AI will replace childbirth in the future. What do you think?

Regarding AI partners and fertility, I think fertility may drop significantly when we have AI partners that meet all needs. Imagine that when you have an AI boyfriend whispering to you while you sleep, providing imagined sexual satisfaction, what is the average person fighting for it? This may lead us to rely more on IVF technology to maintain populations. Even without AI factors, I think by 2100 we will reach the peak of the world's population and then decline. The emergence of AI partners may accelerate this trend.

Mia: We have had DeFi Summer, Solana Summer, what will this year be?

Haseeb: The cryptocurrency market is doing well, but everyone needs to calm down. This year feels like a summer of tariffs and trade wars, and it may take some time to get through, but I am optimistic about the industry prospects.