"Mistress Mu" blockbuster encryption report: Bitcoin will reach $1.5 million, and AI Agent brings epoch-making changes

On February 5, ARK Invest, founded by Mutoujie, released its annual "Big Ideas" report. The report introduces the current situation and important future trends of the accelerated development of future technology from 11 sections including artificial intelligence, Ai agents, Bitcoin, public chains, robots, energy storage, and autonomous driving. The complete content totals 148 pages. Among them, ARK Invest predicts in the Bitcoin section of the report that Bitcoin is expected to reach $1.5 million by 2030. Ai agents will bring epoch-making changes in the future.

ARK Invest said this year's report proposes 11 "big ideas" to showcase the huge changes that are taking place today. Our research shows that these “big ideas” are expected to significantly increase productivity, revolutionize all walks of life and create long-term investment opportunities.

Carbon chain value has drawn out five "big ideas": Bitcoin, artificial intelligence/Ai agents, stablecoins, and public chain expansion for readers to refer to and learn. The overall feeling of the content of this year's report is that it is a lot of intriguing on AI and Crypto. For example, Bitcoin, public chains, stablecoins, DeFi, DEX, smart contracts, digital wallets, etc. have corresponding introductions and predictions. If readers are interested in the report, they can download the full version of the report to read the remaining contents by themselves.

The following are the contents of 5 "Big Creativity" reports excerpted from Carbon Chain Value:

1. Bitcoin: A global monetary system is becoming more mature, the

network foundation is sound, and the number of institutional adoption is increasing.

Bitcoin hits record highs in 2024

Bitcoin Spot ETF Fund is the most successful ETF Fund in history

Bitcoin spot ETF attracted more than US$4 billion inflows on its first day of listing, setting a record for the highest since its listing, surpassing the "2012 Bitcoin ETF Market Report" released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In November 2004, gold ETFs inflowed US$1.2 billion in the first month. Inflows of Bitcoin spot ETFs far exceed the first-month inflows of about 6,000 ETFs issued over the past 30 years.

Bitcoin’s inflation rate drops below long-term supply growth in gold after its fourth halving

After the fourth "halving" in history, the annual growth rate dropped from about 1.8% to about 0.9%. Half is crucial to its design, highlighting Bitcoin’s predictable monetary policy and its role as a scarce asset.

Bitcoin’s annual volatility drops to its all-time lowest, but its risk-adjusted returns remain better than most major asset classes

Bitcoin hash rate hits record high despite sharp drops in miner revenue after halving

Although the halving caused a 50% reduction in Bitcoin miner revenue, its hash rate hit an all-time high. In other words, miners' long-term confidence in Bitcoin remains strong.

The number of transactions soared, thanks to Runes

Bitcoin’s daily transaction volume hits an all-time high, thanks to the launch of the Runes protocol. The Runes protocol helps create alternative tokens directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Bitcoin absorbs significant selling pressure in 2024

In January 2024, the German government seized 50,000 bitcoins related to the online piracy group. Six months later, it sold the Bitcoins. The market successfully absorbed supply, and then the price of Bitcoin rose from $53,000 to $68,000. Additionally, around the middle of the year, the long-awaited Mt. Gox1 creditor repayment program distributed over 109,000 bitcoins, eliminating its biggest unresolved problem.

More and more listed companies hold Bitcoin

Currently, 74 listed companies hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Over the past year, the company's balance sheet has increased fivefold, from $11 billion in 2023 to $55 billion.

Bitcoin’s total cost base hits a new high in 2024

In 2024, Bitcoin’s capitalization (or cost basis) grew by 86%, as its average acquisition cost hit an all-time high, reaching $40,980 per Bitcoin, totaling $811.7 billion.

Bitcoin’s transaction speed and holding behavior highlight its role as a means of store of value

In 2024, Bitcoin’s trading speed dropped to its lowest level in 14 years as supply reached an all-time high for three years or more.

**Bitcoin is expected to achieve our 2030 price target: $1.5

million/BTC**

2. Artificial intelligence computing is accelerating and is about to

reach the end of the board

Thanks mainly to improvements in the AI ​​system architecture, the performance per dollar of AI computing is expected to increase by more than 1,000 times by 2030. By then, we expect computing performance to double 64 times than when integrated circuits were introduced.

Advances in artificial intelligence will release huge market opportunities

With the continuous acceleration of artificial intelligence, autonomous taxis will continue to become popular, and drug development time and cost will drop significantly. AI agents will be able to solve software engineering problems independently and monitor and modify systems around the clock.

The technological revolution accelerates integration

ARK measures the extent to which technology plays a catalyst role among innovation platforms. The degree of integration between them is increasing, with network density increasing by 30% over the past year.

Artificial intelligence is crucial to unlocking the value of precision therapy and multiomics technologies. The smart contract ecosystem is becoming a testing platform, and autonomous AI agents can be paid by improving their capabilities. Next-generation cloud energy demand is driving a timeline for distributed energy generation.

The accelerated development of neural networks is accelerating the development of all other disruptive technologies

Advances in artificial intelligence, energy storage and public blockchain are crucial to the pace of technological advancement

Among disruptive technologies, neural networks are the most important catalyst.

According to our research, advances in neural networks will increase the value of 6 of the other 14 technologies by at least an order of magnitude, creating huge numbers for next-generation cloud, smart devices, autonomous mobility, humanoid robots, precision medicine and multiomics technologies Market expansion. The technological revolution led by artificial intelligence may lead to a significant increase in productivity and a step-by-step growth in economic growth.

The technological inflection point should bring a GDP inflection point

The structural changes in the basic growth rate of the macroeconomic is a historical law, not an exception.

After 100,000 years of economic stagnation, innovation, especially the emergence of text, allowed the empire to connect the continents, and by 1000 AD, the actual growth rate quadrupled.

Agricultural innovation has increased population density and specialized labor force, and by 1500, the annual growth rate has doubled to 0.3%.

In the 400 years before 1900, with the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution sweeping the world, annual GDP growth rate doubled again to 0.6%.

The Second Industrial Revolution, marked by electrification, cars and telephones, ushered in the modern era, with an average growth rate of 5 times, reaching 3%. Technical breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and bionic robots may increase productivity again, achieving another growth step in the next 5 to 10 years.

Disruptive innovation may gradually occupy the market dominance

Disruptive innovations may account for more than two-thirds of the global stock market, with a compound growth rate of 38% by 2030.

In the field of innovation, market value may exceed the so-called Mag 6. Non-innovative companies may begin to shrink as technological deflation associated with innovation threatens margins and competitiveness, even in the case of rapid macroeconomic growth.

3. AI Agents: Redefining consumer interactions and business workflows

What are AI Agents?

AI Agents are expected to accelerate the popularity of digital applications and bring about epoch-making changes in the field of human-computer interaction.

AI Agents:

Understand intentions through natural language and plan with reasoning and appropriate context. Use tools to take action and achieve intentions. Improvements through iteration and continuous learning. Smarter models that use more tools to complete higher value tasks.

AI is accelerating hardware and software adoption

OpenAI's revenue could exceed $10 billion in 2025, monetizing faster than social media companies in the past decade. If ChatGPT adoption is an indicator, AI should drive rapid demand for a range of new technologies.

AI Agents will transform consumer search and discovery

AI Agents are embedded in the operating system of consumer hardware, allowing consumers to delegate all discoveries and research to AI, saving a lot of time. Well-curated AI results will make the digital advertising impression more contextual.

Digital advertising revenue accounted for the largest proportion in 2030

If searches turn to personal AI Agents, AI advertising revenue could surge. By 2030, we believe that AI advertising revenue will account for more than 54% of the USD 1.1 trillion digital advertising market.

By 2030, AI shopping could account for 25% of global addressable online sales

AI Agents are being used in consumer shopping and should simplify product discovery, personalization, and purchase.

ARK research shows that by 2030, AI Agents can boost nearly $9 trillion in total online consumption worldwide.

Digital Wallet is expected to continue to expand its share of e-commerce

ARK's research shows that by 2030, digital wallets (replace payment methods such as credit and debit cards) supported by AI procurement agents may account for 72% of all e-commerce transactions.

Digital wallets are integrating financial services and e-commerce

Based on consumer-oriented operations, the market's valuation of leading digital wallet platforms such as Block, Robinhood and SoFi is currently $1,800 per user.

Digital wallet procurement agents may be at the heart of a shopping trip

Agent prospect development should drive digital wallets upstream to capture the global market share of e-commerce and digital consumption. "One-click checkout" should give way to "One-click purchase".

Procurement agents should increase the corporate value of digital wallets, especially in the e-commerce sector

Based on the lead generation rate, AI Agents can generate $40 billion to $200 billion in global revenue for digital wallet platforms in 2030 (Basic and optimistic scenarios for ARK respectively).

By 2030, AI Agents can add $50 to $200 in enterprise value (EV) to each user of a digital wallet in the United States.

In enterprises, AI Agents will increase productivity through software

Companies deploying AI Agents should be able to increase unit volumes with the same workforce and/or optimize their workforce to engage in higher value activities. As artificial intelligence develops, AI Agents may handle higher proportions of workload and perform higher value tasks independently.

The decline in AI costs will significantly affect the AI ​​Agents economy

New products from OpenAI and Salesforce are supplementing artificial customer service representatives in a cost-effective way. Even if the fixed cost per conversation is $1, as long as AI Agents can handle 35% of customer service consultations, it can save businesses a lot of money. AI Agents should also reduce onboarding and recruitment costs and seat-based software costs while scaling easier than manual.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping software value chain

AI Agents' coding skills are rapidly improving, accelerating the software development cycle. As the cost of software creation declines, software production should accelerate and affect the company's decision to "buy or buy by yourself" and replace traditional software companies with weak adaptability. With the emergence of customer software, growth in each layer of the software stack should accelerate, even if the share shifts to the platform layer.

Artificial intelligence will enhance knowledge-based work

Artificial intelligence is driving the Cambrian explosion in the software industry. By 2030, as businesses invest in productivity solutions, we expect a significant increase in the amount of software deployed by each knowledge worker. Based on adoption rates, global software spending may accelerate from an average of 14% over the past 10 years to an average of 18% to 48% annually.

4. Stablecoins: Reshaping the digital asset field

As one of the fastest growing areas of digital assets, stablecoins have exceeded MasterCard and Visa in 2024

Despite a two-year bear market with a market value drop of more than 70%, the growth of stablecoins has not been interrupted. In 2024, the annualized transaction volume of stablecoins reached US$15.6 trillion, about 119% and 200% of Visa and Mastercard, respectively. Monthly transaction volume reached 110 million, accounting for approximately 0.41% and 0.72% of Visa and Mastercard transaction volumes. In other words, the stablecoin value per transaction is much higher than that of Visa and Mastercard.

Steadycoin trading volume hits a record high in December 2024

Solana, Tron, Ethereum and Base are the main public chains that drive the growth of stablecoin transaction volume in 2024. A new record was set in December 2024, with daily trading volume reaching US$270 billion and monthly trading volume reaching US$2.7 trillion, highlighting the rapid growth of the industry.

Ethena Labs tokenize popular underlying transactions and amasses $6 billion in 12 months

Innovation in the stablecoin space is booming, and Ethena Labs is one of the fastest growing projects. Despite its novel design criticism, the project has taken a large share of the illicit currency-backed stablecoin market and has become a major competitor in this $200 billion space.

The total value locked by Ethena Labs reached $6 billion in the first 12 months. By tokenizing Delta neutral positions, Ethena Labs can provide yields of up to 20%-30%, depending on the market conditions. In a bear market, yields may turn negative. Ethena Labs already accounts for 10% of Ethereum's total holdings and is expanding to Solana and Bitcoin delta-neutral transactions.

After a decline in 2023, the supply of stablecoins and the number of active stablecoin addresses hit record highs in 2024

UDST (Tether) continues to dominate the stablecoin field, followed by USDC (Circle). Together, they account for 90% of the total supply. Stablecoins are "multi-chain" and penetrate almost all major layer 1 blockchains. The stablecoin supply is US$203 billion, accounting for about 0.97% of the US M2 money supply. In December, the active stablecoin address reached 23 million, a record high. Tron is the leading network by monthly active addresses, and is favored by emerging markets for its low transaction fees.

As some countries gradually abandon the dollar, digital assets are moving closer to the dollar

Digital assets are undergoing "stable currency" and "dollarization", while the number of U.S. Treasury bonds sold by China and Japan hit record highs, Saudi Arabia ended a 45-year petrodollar deal, and the BRICS countries reduced by bypassing the SWIFT network Reliance on US dollar payments. Historically, Bitcoin and Ethereum are bridges to enter the digital asset ecosystem. However, stablecoins have taken their place in the past two years, currently accounting for 35% to 50% of on-chain transaction volume.

Stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar dominate, accounting for more than 98% of the supply, followed by gold-backed stablecoins and euro-backed stablecoins, accounting for about 1% and about 0.5% respectively. ARK's research shows that the market will continue to expand and include stablecoins backed by Asian currencies.

As Layer 2 is cheaper and more efficient, stablecoins are attracting interest from retail investors

Retail investors flock to Layer 2 for cheaper and more convenient stablecoin transactions, thus increasing the market share of blockchains such as Arbitrum, Base and Optimism. Meanwhile, whales and institutions continue to operate on the foundational layer of Ethereum. Trading below $100 dominates Base and Optimism, while trading above $100 dominates the base layer of Ethereum.

Peer-to-peer transactions and personal wallet storage dominate stablecoin use cases

External Owned Account (EOA) — Standard Ethereum Address for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Transactions and Storage — accounts for 60% of USDC usage, while centralized exchanges account for 11% and Ethereum Layer2 Cross-chain Bridge account for 7%, Centralized exchanges (DEXs) and money markets each account for 1.7%.

As DeFi usage surges over the next few years, DEX, Bridges and money markets may regain market share from P2P.

While the usage of lending markets, DEX and Bridges fluctuates with market cycles, P2P trading and storage are more flexible because in addition to trading, the product market fit is higher.

Revenue generated by the four major stablecoin issuers dominate the digital assets

Tether, with less than 200 employees, reported $5.2 billion in profits in the first half of 2024, including USDT, the remaining products and services, and unrealized returns on digital assets — apparently one of the most capital-efficient businesses in history.

Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) account for 60% of revenue generated by the top five networks and applications. In the second half of 2024, stablecoins USDT, USDC, DAI/USDS and USDE generated a total of US$3.35 billion in revenue, accounting for an annualized rate of US$6.7 billion.

Tether 's financial performance is amazing, both absolutely and relatively

Tether has less than 200 employees, while JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway both have more than 300,000 employees. In the first half of 2024, the only institutions in the S&P Financial Select Industry Index that had net income exceeding Tether were Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

To balance "de-dollarization", stablecoins are increasing demand for U.S. bonds as collateral

In a world heading towards deglobalization and dedollarization, stablecoins may drive stable demand for U.S. Treasury bonds. As of December 2024, Tether and Circle have collectively become the 20th largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds.

In emerging markets with large populations such as Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia and India, individuals and companies are using stablecoins as a store of value, payment means and cross-border currencies. Stablecoins may become one of the most effective ways to export the dollar.

Stablecoin issuers are transferring risk-free interest rates to users

Circle and Tether have been generating billions of dollars in revenue through Treasury bills and other securities that serve as collateral for their stablecoins. However, in 2024, stablecoins operating outside the United States began to transfer a large portion of their interest income to users in order to cope with competition and demand.

Unless absolutely necessary, Circle and Tether are unlikely to follow this trend. Although the scale remains small, earnings stablecoins are the fastest growing category in the stablecoin market.

By 2030, the proportion of stablecoins in the global M2 supply of fiat currency may increase from 0.17% to 0.9%

Currently, stablecoins are US$203 billion, accounting for 0.17% of the global M2 supply. By 2030, stablecoins may increase to US$1.4 trillion and 0.9% respectively.

By then, stablecoins will become the 13th largest currency in circulation in the world, second only to Spain and ahead of the Netherlands.

5. Public chain expansion: Costs dropped significantly and new use cases

emerged at the application layer

Explore the field of smart contracts

As the digital asset space becomes more complex, smart contracts are driving innovation in more and more industries. The ecosystem is rapidly evolving to meet diverse and dynamic needs – from user-centric applications such as gaming and SocialFi, to advanced financial instruments such as derivatives and structured products, to support for wireless connectivity and Decentralized infrastructure network for energy storage.

Seeking lower-cost and more efficient applications are either deployed at Solana’s high-throughput layer 1 or at Ethereum’s Layer 2

Ethereum 's EIP 4844 technology upgrade reduces transaction costs by 10 times, stimulating applications

EIP 4844, one of Ethereum’s most important technology upgrades to date, has impacted the Layer 2 network by enabling faster and cheaper transactions.

Prior to the EIP 4844 upgrade, the average transaction fee for Ethereum Tier 2 was about $0.50. Now, users only pay about $0.05.

EIP 4844 is the first milestone in the roadmap and it should be able to increase transaction volume per second (TPS) by 250 to 1250 times from about 400 today to 100,000-500,000.

More than 200 Level 2 projects have been launched, and other projects are underway.

Lower transaction costs lead to a surge in Tier 2 activity, pulling users away from the underlying layer of Ethereum

Layer 2 accounts for 85% of the daily active addresses for transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem. Activity on Tier 2 increased Ethereum’s daily transaction volume from 3 million to 15 million in 2024, a 400% increase.

Base is the fastest growing Ethereum layer 2 blockchain

Within one year of launch, Base surpassed all other Ethereum Tier 2 solutions in terms of growth and market share. In 2024, Base accounted for 46% of active users and incurred 63% of fees in Ethereum Tier 2. With a total lock-in value of $15 billion and more than 300 applications deployed, Base has made a significant contribution to Coinbase's cash flow.

Despite migration to Layer 2, Ethereum 's underlying layer still dominates high-value storage and settlement

Institutions, high-value users and whales mainly settle transactions on the Ethereum basic layer. The unit economic benefits of the Ethereum base layer are unparalleled as measured by total locked value (TVL) and each user’s decentralized exchange (DEX).

DEX challenged CEX in spot and derivatives trading as DeFi soared to record highs

When Binance reached a settlement of more than $4 billion with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its CEO stepped down in 2024, the centralized exchange (CEX) lost some share and was decentralized exchange (DEX) ) Take it. From January to peak, spot and derivatives DeFi trading volumes almost doubled, with market share rising from 8% and 3% to 14% and 8%, respectively, setting record highs. During the same period, Binance's market share in centralized exchanges fell from 62% to 35%.

Smart contract-driven exchanges are 5-10 times more efficient than centralized exchanges

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Uniswap, Aerodrome and Raydium leverage the efficiency of small agile teams to develop and maintain core protocol infrastructure. Compared with centralized exchanges, DEX has a huge efficiency advantage, with only one-tenth of that of centralized exchanges. With approximately 9,000 employees, Binance is leading the way in the number of employees in the centralized exchange field.

Liquid pledge and re-pled agreements are the preferred solutions for pledge and re-pled ETH

Liquid pledge and re-pled have become the preferred method of generating Ether income. Due to their earnings, liquidity and accessibility, they now account for 40% of ETH staking. The demand for re-private ETH in order to increase revenue has spawned re-private platforms, which now account for about 5.5 million pledged Ether, accounting for 17% of pledged ETH.

Led by Polymarket, the forecast market becomes a breakthrough consumer application in 2024

In 2024, Polymarket had more than 3 million users, with monthly transaction volume reaching US$1.2 billion, of which 70% of activities are related to elections and politics. After a brief decline after the election, the number of independent users has recovered to 50,000 per day, with trading volumes showing a rebound, with sports being the most important category.

Solana has higher throughput than Ethereum, thanks to its high-performance design and strategic trade-offs

Thanks to the Layer 2 and EIP 4844 upgrades, Ethereum's throughput has more than doubled to approximately 200 transactions per second (TPS). Still, Solana has performed well, with an average throughput of about 800 TPS.

Solana's success is based on a range of tradeoffs, including more expensive hardware requirements and parallel transaction processing. Solana's new Firedancer client can increase its throughput to hundreds of thousands of TPS.

Solana gains market share on several indicators due to the massive adoption of retail investors

Solana saw a significant improvement over other Layer 1s after hitting a bear low of $8 in 2023. Daily active users, revenue, transaction number and total locked value (TVL) all hit record highs or increased by an order of magnitude. Solana is the only Layer 1 competing with Ethereum and Bitcoin on metrics such as daily active addresses and revenue.

Solana and Base are leading in developer adoption and market share

Of the 39,139 new crypto developers added in 2024, Solana leads with 7,625 developers, surpassing the Ethereum main network. With 4,287 developers, Base ranks sixth, surpassing Arbitrum and Starknet, becoming the leading layer 2 solution on Ethereum.