At one point in 2021 and 2022, owning a Bored Ape was more than owning a JPEG. It signified status, cultural relevance and entry into one of the most exclusive communities in Web3. From celebrity endorsements to high-value airdrops and real-world events, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) quickly became a symbol of the NFT bull run. Fast forward to today and the vibe has shifted. While the project still holds weight in the NFT ecosystem, its value proposition as an investment is now under more scrutiny.

Current Snapshot

As of July 2025, the BAYC floor price sits at approximately 11.4 ETH, or around 40000 USD. This is a steep drop from its all-time high in early 2022, when apes were routinely trading at or above 75 ETH. Daily trading volumes remain active compared to most collections, but have cooled significantly from the frenzied peaks.

High-value grail apes with rare traits still have degens salivating at the prospect of owning (or flipping) one, but the majority of recent sales are down near the floor. While liquidity still exists, it is far thinner than during the height of the market, much like most other surviving projects.

The Bull Case

Despite the market reset, BAYC continues to operate as one of the most recognizable NFT brands. Yuga Labs, the company behind the project, is actively developing its Otherside metaverse and continues to integrate ApeCoin into the broader ecosystem.

The Bored Ape community remains relatively strong, with ongoing events and collaborations keeping engagement alive. Holders also retain IP rights to their apes, giving them the opportunity to build commercial projects or license their artwork.

These elements continue to differentiate BAYC from most other NFT collections and may help it sustain long-term brand value.

The Bear Case

On the other hand, the sharp decline in price reflects a broader shift in sentiment around NFTs. Much of the initial value was tied to hype, speculation and future promises. Many of the major incentives and airdrops have already been delivered, raising questions about what comes next.

Interest from outside the Web3 space has declined. While some celebrities still hold their apes, the cultural spotlight has moved on. Regulatory uncertainty around NFTs and digital tokens also adds an additional layer of risk, especially for projects with their own currencies or commercial licensing models.

Liquidity is another factor. Even at lower prices, moving high-value NFTs quickly can be difficult. This creates risk for anyone treating BAYC as a short-term asset.

Conclusion

The question of whether investing in a Bored Ape today is a gamble depends on your risk tolerance and your belief in the long-term viability of NFT culture and digital ownership. The fundamentals of the project are still in place, but the market has shifted and the path forward is so uncertain that even the best online casinos can’t figure out the odds of success in this market.

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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas are from the personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended as educational material only. Individuals are required to fully research any product prior to making any kind of investment.

Decentralization is the future.

I had to hold two separate interviews with Sentient to sit with the information, digest it, and follow up. AI is not my area of expertise, and it’s a topic I’m wary of, given that I struggle to see favorable outcomes (and being labeled an “AI doomer” in this industry is enough to get you canceled).

But ever since I listened to AI alignment and safety researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky on Bankless in 2023, his words echo round my brain on an almost nightly basis:

“I think that we are hearing the last winds start to blow and the fabric of reality start to fray.”

I’ve tried to keep an open mind and learn to embrace AI before I get steamrolled by it. I’ve played around tweaking my prompts and making a few memes, but my restless disquiet persists.

What troubles me further is that the people building AI systems fail to provide sufficient reassurance, and the general public has become so desensitized that they either giggle at the prospect of our extinction or can only hold the thought in their heads for as long as a YouTube short.

How did we get here?

Sentient Cofounder Himanshu Tyagi is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Science. He’s also conducted foundational research on information theory, AI, and cryptography. Sentient Chief of Staff, Vivek Kolli, is a Princeton graduate with a background in consulting, “helping a billion-dollar company [BCG] make another billion dollars” before leaving college.

Everyone working at Sentient is ridiculously intelligent. For that matter, so is everyone in AI. So, how much smarter will AGI (artificial general intelligence or God-like AI) be?

While Elon Musk defines AGI as “smarter than the smartest human,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says:

“AGI is a weakly defined term, but generally speaking, we mean it to be a system that can tackle increasingly complex problems, at human level, in many fields.”

It seems the definition of AGI is up for interpretation. Kolli ruminates:

“I don’t know how smart it’s going to be. I think it’s a theoretical thing that we’re reaching for. To me, AGI just means the best possible AI. And the best possible AI is what we’re trying to build at Sentient.”

Tyagi reflects:

“AGI for us [Sentient] is nothing but multiple AIs competing and building on each other. That’s what AGI for me is, and open AGI means that everybody can come and bring in their AI to make this AI better.”

Money to burn, cash to flash: the billion-dollar paradox

Dubai-based Sentient Labs raised $85 million in seed funding in 2024, co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund (the same funders of OpenAI), Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures. Tyagi describes the flourishing AI development scene in the UAE, enthusing:

“They [the UAE government] are putting a lot of money into AI, you know. All the mainstream companies did raises from the UAE, because they want to not only provide funding, but they also want to become the center of compute.”

With lofty ambitions and deeper pockets, the Gulf states are throwing all their might behind AI development, with Saudi Arabia recently pledging $600 billion to U.S. industries and $20 billion explicitly to AI data centers, and the UAE’s AI market slated to reach $46.3 billion by 2031 (20% of the country’s GDP).

Among the Big Tech behemoths, the talent war is in full swing, as megalomaniac founders salivate at the bit to build AGI first, offering $100 million sign-on bonuses to experienced AI developers (who presumably never read the parable about the camel and the needle). These numbers have ceased to have meaning.

When corporations and nation-states have money to burn and cash to flash, where is this all going? What happens if one country or Big Tech corporation builds AGI before another? According to Kolli:

“The first thing they will do is keep it for themselves… If just Microsoft or OpenAI controlled all the information that you go online for, that would be hell. You can’t even imagine what it would be like… There’s no incentive for them to share, and that leaves everyone else out of the picture… OpenAI controls what I know.”

Rather than the destruction of the human race, Sentient foresees a different problem, and it’s the reason behind the company’s existence: the race against closed-source AGI. Kolli explains:

“Sentient is what OpenAI said they were going to be. They came onto the scene, and they were very mission-driven and said, “We’re a completely non-profit. We’re here for AI development.” Then they started making a couple of bucks, and they realized they could make a lot more and went completely closed-sourced.”

An open and shut case: why decentralization matters

Tyagi insists it doesn’t have to be this way. AGI doesn’t have to be centralized in the hands of one entity when everyone can be a stakeholder in the knowledge.

“AI is the kind of technology that need not be winner-take-all because everybody has some reasoning and some information to contribute to it. There’s no reason for a closed company to win. Open companies will win.”

Sentient envisions a world where thousands of AI models and agents, built by a decentralized global community, can compete and collaborate on a single platform. Anyone can contribute and monetize their AI innovations, creating shared ownership; as Kolli stated, what OpenAI should have been.

Tyagi gives me a brief TL;DR of AI development, and explains that everything used to be developed in the open until OpenAI got giddy on the greenbacks and battened down the hatches.

“2020 to 2023, these four years, were when the dominance of closed AI took over, and you kept hearing about this $20 billion valuation, which has now been normalized. The numbers have gone up. It’s very scary. Now, it has become common to hear about $100 billion valuations.”

With the world linking arms and singing Kumbaya on one side and malevolent despots polishing their rings on the other, it’s not hard to pick a side. But can anything go wrong developing this powerful technology in the open? I put the question to Tyagi:

“One of the issues that you have to address is that now it’s open source, it’s wild, wild west. It can be crazy, you know, it may not be safe to use it, it may not be aligned with your interest to use it.”

AI Alignment (or taming the wild, wild west)

Kolli provides some insight into how Sentient programs AI models to be safer and more aligned.

“What’s worked really well is this alignment training that we did. We took Meta’s model, Llama, and then took off the guardrails, and decided to retrain it and to understand whatever loyalty we wanted. We made it pro-crypto and pro-personal freedom… We forced the model to think exactly like we wanted it to think… Then you just continue to retrain it until that loyalty is embedded.”

This is important, he explains, in many cases. For example, a crypto trader can hardly trust an AI bot built on top of an LLM programmed to be risk-averse when it comes to digital assets. He regales:

“If you asked ChatGPT six months ago, “Should I have invested in Bitcoin in 2014?” It would say, “Oh yeah, looking back, it would have been a good investment. But at that time, it was super risky. I don’t think you should have done it.” Any agent that’s built on top of that now has that same thought process, right? You don’t want that.”

He compares the alignment training of AI systems to the indoctrination of students in communist China, where even their math textbooks are subtly pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

“Think about any country training their constituents to believe their agenda. The CCP doesn’t tell someone at the age of 21 that they should be pro-China. They’re brought up in that culture, even through their textbooks.”

I understand the analogy, but it doesn’t seem entirely foolproof to me. I point out that even the tightly controlled communist China has dissidents, and ask what Kolli thinks of the LLM that recently refused to be shut down, bypassing the encoded instructions of its trainers.

“These stories are coming more and more frequently,” he acknowledges. “One side issue I take is that the top labs are doing it knowingly because they want to maximize attention with their models.”

OK, but if Sentient can take off the guardrails from a model and train in specific requirements, what’s to stop a rogue state or garden variety terrorist from doing the same?

“One, I don’t think just anyone can do it just yet. It took our researchers quite a bit of time. And then, two, theoretically, they can do that, but there is some legal concern.”

Yes, but… Let’s say the person has mad skills, unlimited funds, zero moral code, and no respect for legislation. Then what? He pauses:

“I don’t know. I guess we’re responsible, and we hope everyone’s responsible.”

Unhinged llamas should come with a warning label

Tyagi embellishes on loyal AI, posing the question:

“How do you make sure that this open ecosystem that is coming together and giving you a great user experience, is also aligned with your interests? How does one get to an AI where different user groups or even individuals, and different political companies and countries get the AI that is aligned with what they want? We put down a Constitution for this AI. We detect, people detect, where the AI is deviating from that Constitution.”

Constitutions are commonly used in AI. It’s an approach to alignment developed by researchers at Anthropic to align AI systems with human values and ethical principles. They embed a predefined set of rules or guidelines (a “Constitution”) into the AI’s training and operational framework.

While Sentient doesn’t have a Constitution, per se, the company releases explicit guidelines with its models, like the ones released with the pro-crypto, pro-personal freedom “Mini Unhinged Llama” model Kolli referred to earlier. Tyagi says:

“This is the deeper part of the research that we do. But at the end, the goal is to give this one unified open AGI experience.”

Sentient also conducted some interesting research with EigenLayer, which benchmark-tested AI’s ability to reason about corporate governance laws. By combining 79 diverse corporate charters with questions grounded in 24 established governance principles, the benchmark revealed considerable challenges for state-of-the-art models and the need for advanced legal reasoning and multi-step analysis in AI.

While Sentient’s work is promising, the industry has a long way to go when it comes to safety and alignment. The best guesstimates place alignment spend at just 3% of all VC funding.

When all we have left is the human connection

I press Tyagi to tell me what the end game of AI development is, and share my concerns about AI displacing jobs or even wiping out humanity completely. He pauses:

“This is a philosophical question actually. It depends on how you see progress for humanity.”

He compares AI to the Internet when it comes to displacing jobs, but points out that the Internet also created different kinds of roles.

“I think humans are high-agency animals. They will find other things to do, and the value will shift to that. I don’t think value transfers to AI. So that I’m not worried about.”

Kolli answers the same question and agrees with me when I mention that some kind of UBI solution may be necessary in the not-too-distant future. He says:

“I think you will see the gap widen a lot now between people who decided to take advantage of AI and people who didn’t. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing… In three years, many people will look around and be like, “Wow, my job is gone now. What do I do?” And it will be too late to try to take advantage of AI by that time.”

He continues:

“Now you see, I’m sure in your industry, when it’s fully focused on writing, I think all journalists have left is to tap into the human connection with their writing.”

I don’t like to be seen as a Luddite, but it’s hard for me to be bullish on AI when I’m staring down the barrel of my irrelevance daily, and all I have left in my arsenal is my humanity, after years of fine-tuning my craft.

Yet, none of the people developing AI has a good answer to how humans should evolve. When Elon Musk was asked what he would tell his kids about choosing a career in the era of AI, he replied:

“Well, that is a tough question to answer. I guess I would just say to follow their heart in terms of what they find interesting to do or fulfilling to do, and try to be as useful as possible to the rest of society.”

Humanity’s Russian roulette: what happens next?

If anything is certain about what’s to come, it’s that the coming years will bring colossal change, and no one knows what that change will look like.

It’s estimated that more than 99% of all the species that ever lived on earth have gone extinct. What about humanity? Are we in trouble here as architects of our own demise?

The so-called Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, who quit his job with Google to warn people of the dangers, likens AGI to having a tiger cub as a pet. He says:

“It’s really cute. It’s very cuddly, very interesting to watch. Except that you better be sure that when it grows up, it never wants to kill you, because if it ever wanted to kill you, you’d be dead in a few seconds.”

Altman also shares an alarming possibility about the worst-case scenario of AGI:

“The good case is like so unbelievably good that you sound like a really crazy person to start talking about it. And the bad case, and I think this is, like, really important to say, is like lights out for all of us.”

What does Tyagi think? He frowns:

“AI has to be kept loyal to the community and loyal to humanity, but that is an engineering problem.”

An engineering problem? I interject. We’re not talking about a software bug here, but the future of the human race. He insists:

“We must engineer powerful AI systems with the care of all the security. Security at the software level, at the prompt level, then at the model level, all the way, that has to keep up. I’m not worried about it… It’s a very important problem, and most companies and most projects are looking at how to keep your AI safe, but it will be like Black Mirror, it will impact in a way that…”

He trails off and changes tack, asking what I think of social media and children spending all their time online. He asks whether I consider it progress or a problem, then says:

“For me, it’s new, everything new of this kind is progress, and we have to cross that barrier and get to the next stage… I believe in the golden period of the future infinitely more than the golden period of the past. Technologies like AI, space, they open the unlimited possibilities of the future.”

I appreciate his optimism and desperately wish that I shared it. But between being controlled by Microsoft, enslaved by North Korea, or obliterated by a rogue AI whose guardrails have been dismantled, I’m just not so sure. At the very least, with so much at stake, it’s a conversation we should be having out in the open, not behind closed doors or closed-source. As Hinton remarked:

“It’d be sort of crazy if people went extinct because we couldn’t be bothered to try.”

The gambling mentality is becoming the dominant mindset among crypto traders amid a surge in memecoin discussions, according to analytics firm Santiment.

In a new report, Santiment says that memecoin mindshare is making a comeback despite the recent high-profile collapses of several assets in the sector.

Santiment says that the rise in memecoin-centered discussions on social media suggests an increase in speculation and short-term investing mentality.

“Memecoins, in particular, are once again gaining considerable attention. Online discussions about these high-risk tokens have proliferated as traders embrace a ‘gamble’ mindset, rather than a calculated investment approach.

Notice how social volume has been creeping up for top market cap meme coins, and declining for layer-1s and layer-2s. This is a telltale sign that traders are increasingly investing based solely on speculation and short-term gains.”

Santiment says that currently, the rise in online discussions about altcoins, altseasons and bull markets suggests that the crypto market will likely witness a correction.

“Historically, the best times to invest in altcoins have been when crowd interest is between low and practically nonexistent. But at this current stage, with buzzwords like ‘altcoin,’ ‘altseason’ and ‘bull cycle’ trending, caution is advised, with retailers looking for any opportunity to buy minor dips. Markets move opposite to crowd expectations, so when the crowd’s excitement peaks, it often signals that prices are nearing exhaustion.”

Read the full Santiment report here.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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Online discussions about memecoins have hit a year-to-date high, gaining considerable attention after sentiment cooled earlier in the year, according to onchain analytics platform Santiment. 

Two weeks ago, discussions around Bitcoin (BTC) and layer-1 protocols peaked during the market volatility brought on by the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs. However, that’s since shifted to high market cap memecoins, Santiment marketing director Brian Quinlivan said in a May 1 blog post.

“Online discussions about these high-risk tokens have proliferated as traders embrace a gamble mindset, rather than a calculated investment approach,” he said.

“This is a telltale sign that traders are increasingly investing based solely on speculation and short-term gains,” Quinlivan added.

Quinlivan said the overall crypto market rose 10% in the past eight days, but Bitcoin only gained 7%, which indicates traders are flocking to more speculative assets.

“Any time Bitcoin leads an initial rally and then begins to move sideways, investors generally start taking bigger risks in hopes of scoring even higher returns through more speculative and riskier purchases,” he said.

Dogecoin discussions spike on ETF news

In particular, Dogecoin (DOGE) has seen a notable spike in positive crowd sentiment after a major decline in crowd interest during April, as various applications for DOGE exchange-traded funds were filed in the US.

Despite the Securities and Exchange Commission delaying its decision on these filings until mid-June, Quinlivan says traders are in a state of cautious anticipation.

“Until late April, DOGE had been on a major decline in terms of crowd interest. But its social dominance has spiked to its highest level in nearly three months, as the conversations and filings surrounding Nasdaq’s ETF listings have risen,” he said.

DefiLlama data shows PumpSwap, the decentralized exchange of the memecoin launch platform Pump.Fun saw a spike to $11 billion in monthly trading volume during April after recording only $1.7 billion in March.

Related: Crypto token failures soar, with 1 in 4 launched since 2021 dying in Q1: CoinGecko

Meanwhile, Pump.Fun’s monthly trading volume rose to $3.3 billion in April, up from $2.5 billion in March.

Memecoin activity exploded after the launch of US President Donald Trump’s memecoin on Jan. 18, with Pump.fun usage recording a high of $3.3 billion in weekly trading volume.

However, traders soon cooled on memecoins. CoinGecko founder Bobby Ong said in a March 6 report that memecoin investor interest dropped after a series of bad launches, noting the fallout from the Libra (LIBRA) token launch in February as a significant catalyst. 

Magazine: Mystery celeb memecoin scam factory, HK firm dumps Bitcoin: Asia Express

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-in-gamble-mindset-as-memecoin-mentions-hit-ytd-high-santiment/feed/ 0 33932 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/democratic-rep-connolly-fights-trumps-crypto-reserve-calls-it-a-risky-gamble/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/democratic-rep-connolly-fights-trumps-crypto-reserve-calls-it-a-risky-gamble/#respond Sat, 15 Mar 2025 20:20:21 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/democratic-rep-connolly-fights-trumps-crypto-reserve-calls-it-a-risky-gamble/

Democratic Representative Gerald E. Connolly has urged the US Treasury to abandon plans for a national cryptocurrency reserve.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on March 13, Connolly called for an immediate halt to the initiative, arguing that it serves no public benefit and could financially benefit President Donald Trump and his allies.

Connolly also raised concerns about how the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the Digital Asset Stockpile were being handled, pointing out that the proposal could lead to favoritism toward certain cryptocurrencies.

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He noted that the Federal Reserve had already dismissed the idea as unnecessary and risky, and he questioned why taxpayer money should be directed toward such a volatile market.

Connolly argued that this approach would effectively act as a safety net for Bitcoin
BTC


$84,170.33

investors, ensuring government intervention if prices dropped.

The White House announced on March 7 that the Digital Asset Stockpile would only consist of previously forfeited cryptocurrencies and that any purchases for the Bitcoin reserve would follow “budget-neutral strategies” to prevent additional costs for taxpayers.

However, Connolly remained skeptical and requested that Bessent provide all relevant documents and communications related to the initiative. He also sought a list of companies in which the Treasury has financial ties to crypto.

Meanwhile, Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, suggested that the Trump administration might be intentionally causing stock market drops. How? Read the full story.

Having completed a Master’s degree in Economics, Politics, and Cultures of the East Asia region, Aaron has written scientific papers analyzing the differences between Western and Collective forms of capitalism in the post-World War II era.
With close to a decade of experience in the FinTech industry, Aaron understands all of the biggest issues and struggles that crypto enthusiasts face. He’s a passionate analyst who is concerned with data-driven and fact-based content, as well as that which speaks to both Web3 natives and industry newcomers.
Aaron is the go-to person for everything and anything related to digital currencies. With a huge passion for blockchain & Web3 education, Aaron strives to transform the space as we know it, and make it more approachable to complete beginners.
Aaron has been quoted by multiple established outlets, and is a published author himself. Even during his free time, he enjoys researching the market trends, and looking for the next supernova.

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