Opinion by: Kony, co-founder and CEO of GAIB
During the gold rush, it wasn’t the fortune-seekers getting rich. While it was assumed that you could take your picks and shovels and become wealthy overnight, it was grueling work with no guaranteed returns. Those who benefited were the infrastructure providers. The landowners, the pick and shovel sellers and the transportation suppliers saw a real return on investment, while the rest searched day and night for gold they never found.
This still rings true today. Those who invest in “boom” infrastructure gain more than those chasing the hype. In Q1 of this year, AI tokens dominated crypto narratives, holding 37.5% of global investor interest in Q1. Degens started jumping in, hoping that the next one would 10x and launch them into early retirement.
While not all integrations are shallow, and true advancements are coming from certain players, degens are noise-chasing and flocking to AI tokens like settlers running into the mine.
The compute bottleneck no one’s watching
By 2030, data centers will require nearly $7 trillion to keep up with the compute demand. Without compute, AI projects (or tokens) cannot exist. Like infrastructure in the gold rush, it’s the bottleneck that nobody is watching. Compute is AI’s lifeblood: revenue-generating and essential, but a scarce resource nonetheless. Crypto may not have noticed this yet, but TradFi institutions certainly have. Major institutional moves are taking place, with Big Tech hoarding chips and investing in data centers. Yet, at the same time, they’re struggling to underwrite these deals, leading to a lack of capital flow for AI operators.
Here’s where the opportunity lies for crypto, and why the industry has been playing it wrong so far. Crypto’s original ideals were to turn infrastructure into open markets, and we’ve done this for financial plumbing. Why not consider it for AI infra, too? Retail is buying the headlines while institutions are buying the hardware. A market built on attention is not sustainable, but a market built on ownership allows us to take control into our own hands and create something long-lasting.
Compute as the first truly live RWA
Looking beyond speculative token design, real yield from productive assets is within our reach. Compute is digital-native, composable and has measurable output. It’s uniquely positioned as a prime real-world asset (RWA). Instead of betting on the latest GPT memecoin, investors can go straight to the source and own a slice of what’s powering the next ChatGPT. This tech is real, exists and is ready to build markets around the infrastructure powering this new economy. As users, all we have to do is shift our attention and note what it could potentially achieve for both the investor and society.
Related: The $3.5B shift: How Bitcoin miners are cashing in on AI
Compute is active. It stands out among traditional and passive RWAs, like bonds, real estate, art and collectibles, etc. They hold “real value” but typically mimic TradFi instruments. Compute, on the other hand, powers live demand, feeds AI models and generates yield in real time, which can be passed to those who participate in these capital markets as real, sustainable onchain yield. Rather than being just a tokenized paper asset, it provides the raw economic materials of the AI age. If crypto wants to matter in the AI stack, it must start here and jump into a new class of RWA.
If crypto wants to shape AI, it has to fund the rails
The gold rush made one thing clear: Infrastructure always outlives hype. Crypto’s true power has never been chasing hype but building open, unstoppable markets. AI might feel new, but the lesson is timeless. Those who control the rails shape the future.
Opinion by: Kony, co-founder and CEO of GAIB.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
