Author: Lou Kerner, CryptoOracle co-founder Source: medium Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

Encryption The market enters 2025 with the optimism of a transformative year in 2024. Increased institutional adoption and the upcoming new U.S. regulatory environment expected to provide a more favorable regulatory environment have reignited investor confidence. Against this backdrop, here are my top three predictions for the crypto industry in 2025:

The best of times: optimistic predictions

Prediction 1 - Bitcoin will Breaking through $1 million in 2031

In the short term, crypto market prices are affected by too many external factors, so price prediction within one year is very difficult. According to my January 2019 forecast, Bitcoin would end 2018 at $3,742, which is a far cry from the three most conservative predictions from January 2018, when Bitcoin was at $14,156.

I originally set the 10-year price in a January 2021 post Target. The $1 million forecast is based on two assumptions:

1. The market value of gold continues to grow at historical levels;

2. The market value of Bitcoin will reach the market value of gold within 10 years.

In these four years, the market value of gold has grown almost three times as much as I assumed , while Bitcoin’s share of the store-of-value market is lower than expected. If these two trends continue, the $1 million goal remains within reach.

It is worth noting that the above prediction is only based on Bitcoin’s “store of value” narrative. I believe that Bitcoin’s unique properties have the potential to create tremendous value outside of a store of value, and this is just the icing on this “extraordinary Bitcoin cake.”

Prediction 2 - AI agents will become the mainstream narrative in 2025

AI agents are programs that use artificial intelligence to perform tasks autonomously. They make decisions and act based on programming, data, and the environment. These tasks can be as simple as data entry, accounting, and customer service, or as complex as content generation or predictive modeling (such as investment or sales forecasting)

AI agents can interact with humans, other agents, or the environment to achieve specific goals. They are more efficient, accurate, and reliable than humans, and good AI agents can learn and improve on their own through experience without human supervision .

Many AI frameworks have spawned tens of thousands of AI agents.

Among them. The most representative framework Virtuals Protocol, grew more than 80 times in the fourth quarter. In the second installment of our seminar series "The Rise of AI Agents", three guests gave an in-depth analysis of Virtuals Protocol.

Encryption plays an integral role in the AI ​​agent technology stack, providing a series of enhanced features, including:

< p style="text-align: left;">•Pay transaction fees - including transactions between agents;

•Provide secure and transparent data between AI agents and users Management method;

•Trustless interaction – Blockchain allows AI agents to conduct peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries.

All major technology companies are actively developing AI agent technology. Last week, Google released a 42-page white paper with the straightforward title: "Agents."

And now, it's all just beginning.

The worst of times: pessimistic predictions

Despite the surge in crypto prices, the industry still faces many challenges. In particular, crypto-assets outside of Bitcoin have not yet truly achieved mainstream adoption, and crypto is still too complex. Although we have made progress in simplifying complexity, I think The biggest challenge facing the encryption industry still has no substantial breakthrough

Prediction 3 - FAMGAN will continue to dominate technology value creation.Made

Since I first wrote in January 2017, I have believed that the biggest risk facing technological innovation (including the crypto industry) is the unstoppable rise of technology giants. I call these giants FAMGAN (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia).

In the past decade, these companies have contributed to 70% of the growth in market value of the technology market. While the crypto industry has added $3.5 trillion in market capitalization over the past decade, FAMGAN’s market capitalization has grown by more than $15 trillion.

They are huge monopolies (10 times the size of the entire crypto market ), and getting stronger every day. If they haven't captured market share in your industry today, it's only a matter of time.

Over the past eight years, I have written continuously about the FAMGAN threat, most recently in the November 2024 article "The First Thing Trump Should Do "Thing: Helping the Crypto Industry", my concerns are gradually emerging in reality.

I feel like the broader crypto community is waging a Star Wars-level war with FAMGAN. This war is about the soul of the metaverse, which will be dominated by crypto. and AI-driven. We are at war with FAMGAN and other tech oligarchs (such as Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, etc.). This war is comparable to "Star Wars", FAMGAN is the Death Star, and the crypto community is the resistance.

Sadly, in most cases, the Death Star wins. But in the face of a FAMGAN-driven dystopian future, the war is worth fighting.