The market is no different.

No matter how much you lose, how badly you fail, or how painful things feel, the market keeps moving. Prices keep fluctuating. Opportunities keep coming to those who are prepared to seize them.

The more knowledge and experience you accumulate, the more opportunities you are able to recognize. Instead of fearing losses, sinking into regret, or giving up and getting left behind, the only real choice is to keep moving forward and become better.

From a macro and political standpoint, there were no major negative surprises this week, which helped ease market anxiety somewhat. Gold experienced a sharp correction. Next week, however, is shaping up to be highly volatile, driven by two major events:

I shared my broader views on market risks and uncomfortable variables in last week’s piece. There hasn’t been much new information since then, so you can revisit that article if needed.

Regarding widespread fears of an AI bubble bursting and triggering a broader financial market domino effect, I found four charts that actually tell a very different story.

These four charts support the following points:

CapEx refers to capital expenditures: investments companies make to acquire, upgrade, or maintain long-term assets such as machinery, factories, infrastructure, and technology. These assets generate economic value over many years.

→ The biggest positive of this tech growth cycle, in my view, is that it is not being fueled by excessive leverage stacked on leverage.
→ Additionally, rather than worrying that only a handful of tech companies are carrying the entire market, there is a reasonable explanation: technology, especially AI, is now deeply embedded across nearly every sector of the economy. The value it creates has moved to a new normal baseline.

More than a month ago, Base hinted that it was considering launching a token, immediately drawing attention to the Base ecosystem. This week, Base once again became a focal point after:

Both deals are tied to a well-known figure: Cobie.

In an increasingly competitive environment where chains are actively defining their positioning, what Base is doing is quite clear: aggressively attracting capital into its ecosystem, where opportunities are more likely to emerge. (I mentioned this one month ago.)

To give you a clearer picture of what Base currently offers and where it might be heading, here’s the broader landscape:

Coinbase is prioritizing Base as the home for its on-chain experiments, ranging from DEX trading and lending to SocialFi, AI agents, and automated payments via x402.

Confirming plans around a potential $BASE token has further amplified attention and capital inflows, while the upcoming public launch of Base App could become the primary gateway for mainstream users entering the on-chain world.

At a strategic level, Coinbase is building two parallel fronts:

These TradFi and on-chain feedback loops reinforce one another, and Base is widely expected to benefit significantly if a token is launched.

This week, a16z released its State of Crypto 2025 report, offering a comprehensive overview of the crypto market outlook. You can find the full report via the link in the image.

Here are the points I found most noteworthy:

x402 is a technology solution developed by Coinbase. It first appeared in May but only began gaining widespread attention on X in the past 2–3 days. The number of projects and transaction volume related to x402 have surged dramatically within a single day.

This trend is currently playing out across Base, Solana, BNB Chain, Polygon, and more, but Base remains the strongest hotspot.

You can explore related projects via this dashboard: x402scan.

x402 enables AI agents and web applications to make direct crypto payments within seconds for things like API usage, data, compute resources, microtransactions worth fractions of a cent, or even direct AI-to-AI transactions.

Previously, AI could not autonomously handle payments. It required human input such as credit card details or manual confirmations. With x402, AI agents effectively have their own crypto wallets, allowing them to pay autonomously for required services.

According to a16z, x402 could help AI agents transact across over $30 trillion of internet-based economic activity.

→ I see x402 as a strong missing puzzle piece for AI agents, especially since last year’s AI Agent trend in crypto largely produced “advanced chatbots” without deep integration into payments or investing.

That said, x402 has already surged sharply over the past 2–3 days. Should you feel regret or fear missing a massive opportunity?

→ My answer is no.

This is the first wave, driven by uncertainty and speculation, where even builders may not fully understand the long-term fundamentals. At this stage, many projects are pure speculation, not much different from memecoin.

Right now, x402 sits on the left side of the Bell Curve meme: few projects with real fundamentals, and most participants engaging in attention-based trading.

In these phases, those who act without overthinking sometimes win short-term (the left-side guy).
If you’re not skilled at speculation or short-term trading, your edge lies in deep understanding: what x402 could become, which products truly achieve product-market fit, and where long-term value might emerge once the hype fades (the cloaked figure).

Staying confused, biased, and only jumping in once prices have already exploded is how you end up as the guy stuck at the top.

This framework helped me trade the recent AI Agent wave:
AI16Z (x10), DEGENAI (x3), BIOS (x5).

Related reads on x402: Link_1, Link_2.

Back in May, after reviewing market structure, I identified three major trends:
Perpetual Trading, DeFAI, Trading App.

Perpetual Trading is already playing out. With x402, I hope we see the revival of AI-related crypto narratives: DeFAI and AI Agent.

The article that impressed me most this week is by Chris Dixon, author of Read Write Own and partner at a16z.

If you’re an investor, especially in crypto, I strongly recommend reading it at least once.

We invest in a technology-driven market that moves and evolves extremely fast. Maintaining a closed mindset or strong bias is the fastest way to miss opportunities.

Have a great weekend.

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