TL;DR

Merlin Chain Updates

• Pre-stage POS: Launching BTC staking

• Shifting to AI agents to simplify usage.

Market Trends

• Market rebounding; meme trading low.

• Bitcoin aligns with traditional markets, not risk-reversation.

• The second half awaits growth, narratives, likely May/June.

Merlin & AI

• Merlin's AI agent to streamline bridging and trading; no wallet integration yet due to potential risks.

• BTC.Fun is going to launch his own AI version

Q: How's everything?

Jeff: We're glad the market is somehow bouncing back a little bit. The liquidity is coming back across lots of chains. I’ve been talking to lots of founders. I had dinner with the Virtual team last night—they’re trying to design differently. We were discussing how we have all kinds of pump-fun-like products, but I think some people are getting sick of the Pump.fun bonding curve. One thing I’ll share here, probably 99% people don’t know: if you check the Pump.fun bonding curve, 80% of the tokens in the inner part, the ones traded first, get sniped by one transaction. So that means 80% goes to the project owner. I don’t see how that’s relevant with fair launch, because you still give 80% liquidity token. With VC tokens, most are locked and you can see that on-chain down chain, but that’s 80% liquidity token. So, some people are getting sick of that.

The good thing is people aren’t quitting. People are building, trying to do something new to get attention again for the second half, like I said a few shows ago. Right now is definitely halftime—lots of people are building. Lots of people are thinking. I think the next half, the second half, will be crazier, more Ponzi, more dangerous.

You can see lots of hacks recently. Korean hackers talked to me on Telegram, pretending to be a partner of a big fund. You cannot imagine how many times I get this, or how many times the employees of these famous projects are getting DMs like, “Do you want to hack your own project, work with me, fake your boss to sign a transaction, and I’ll share 10% with you.” Lots of hacking happening lately. Like I said many times, we have billions—$26 billion bridging in and out—no funds lost. But lots of friends around me, like the Mask founder, got hacked. Infini got hacked, $50 million, and the founder himself covered all the loss. So be careful, everyone.

Q: And now, how's everything on Merlin?

Jeff: With the Merlin Chain we talked about last time, the number was 40 million, but right now it’s about 110 million, 105 million, something like that.

Yeah, just like 100 million. I’m hoping this number can be bigger in the coming weeks as well. That shows the community has confidence because we airdrop 20% of our token, no matter what other VC projects say about fair launch or whatever. Last year, you never saw a big project airdrop 20%—most projects airdrop like 1%, 2%, 3%. So all these holders, their confidence—I think this cycle punishes Diamond Hands so hard that I want to change to Paperhand, but I’m just glad all these community members are still believing in Diamond Hand. We’re trying our best to reward diamond hands. That’s the first thing.

Also, the pre-stage of POS will be launching BTC next. That gives you not 50%—no project can give you 50% APR based on Bitcoin. We had like 50% to 20% sometimes, probably like a week in a month, for Ethena staking, for Jupiter, you can take your Bitcoin on Solana Jupiter to have a 15 to 20% APR. Sometimes we have 15% to 20%, but the average is about 6 to 10. So we’ll be having a BTC staking as well. You will get APR for Bitcoin, which is like—I hear you guys talking about what tokens last. Bitcoin for sure. I know all this liquid fund and investment teams and stuff—only 1% of the funds can outrun Bitcoin. That’s all. Yeah, only 1% can outrun Bitcoin. So you can have APR for Bitcoin, and you will get rewarded by MERL token as well as a bonus. That’s coming first thing about staking.

The second thing is we’re not exactly launching the AI, like shifting Merlin chain into one agent. This means you don’t need to open any website anymore. You go to this agent, connect wallets, and it tells you all the assets you have, all the ups and downs, the valuation, and the liquidity. For example, if you want to sell this token or sell party for MERL, you just tell it to do so. It will pop up a signature—not in version 1, but in version 2. You could pop up a signature for your UniSat or MetaMask, sign this, and it handles it. Asking about how to build on Merlin Chain? It gives you all the Github and gitbook instructions you need to know how to bridge, bridge out. I’m tired of answering all these questions in Discord. So it tells you: put this bridge out, click this, we’re bridging. Want to earn the highest between APR? It recommends you few projects or Merlin Chain lending protocols as well, perp trading, spot trading, launching a MEME. All these things can be done in one agent. This guy tells you everything, and you choose to do this or not. Basically solves customer service, saves us paying all these mods in Discord to do this.

Also, BTC.Fun is going to launch his own AI version. I think that’s something I’m looking forward to as well. We’re seeing lots of AI pump-fun, AI launchpads, but I’m really looking forward to new innovation there. Even though right now meme trading is still at a low point, I think this will be coming back. We’ll be having a campaign with UniverseX to do trading across chains, like I said here many times before.

I think maybe we don’t know, but you can buy BNB memes, base memes, Solana memes using your Bitcoin in one second, with very low fees, directly in your wallets. That’s a perfect case for me because I have lots of Bitcoin and I don’t want to hold Ethereum, or Solana, to be honest. Sometimes when you see $TRUMP or something crazy on the BNB chain—$BROCCOLI, I don’t know if you guys know—you can see some crazy things. You just want one click to buy these memes from your Bitcoin. I’ve shared before that many users have bought $TRUMP token using Merlin Bitcoin. That’s a fact on chain. And these people made money. There’s no time to buy Solana, withdraw from a central exchange, bridge to Solana, learn how to use Phantom Wallet, buy this token from Raydium or Meteora, and then make money. That’s nonsense. We have that token too.

Sometimes you have profits, you can click sell, and Bitcoin comes back to your Merlin wallet. You don’t need a Solana wallet to withdraw Solana from that wallet. No, you just click sell, and it comes back in Bitcoin. So basically, you spend half a Bitcoin buying $TRUMP, and you have two Bitcoin coming back. You end up with 1.5 more. I’m still trying to push this, trying to have more campaigns to educate the market because that’s the most innovation I’ve seen in the past three months. I think that should be stated.

If you check UniverseX trading volume on Dune.com, it’s growing very high because you never know which chain will have a crazy meme. One day, maybe Tron network will have some dog it went from 100K to $350 million. Sometimes there’s a shitcoin shake way on Avalanche, ICP, Tron network, Base, Sui or others. You never know, but you can use this to buy tokens from all these chains. That’s something we’re pushing.

Q: You mentioned something really cool about Merlin AI. Will it be able to interact with Universe X as well, so I can say, 'Hey, the $TRUMP coin just launched, go buy Harry,' and it’ll just do that for me?

Jeff: Yeah, I expect that from you. You’re very right about this. You just input the contract address, the CA, and it gives you the token name. Then you say, “Buy this using my Bitcoin”—20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, a thousand bucks, or all my Bitcoin, whatever you choose—and it will execute the transaction for you. I think that definitely lowers the bar for users because most people don’t have the energy to learn. Like me, I never use move chains or Sui, Aptos— I never use their wallet—but this helps me keep my Bitcoin while still having some fun gambling with degens. So yeah, that’s one thing.

We want to get more institutions on board. We want to do more things. Investors choose projects that keep building. From my experience, most projects after TGE just disappear. That shows we’re still building, we still have some good news that can’t be shared today, but at least some people see this. So yeah, that’s all I can share today. Next week, we can try the Merlin Wizard for fun.

Q: More specifically on this product, are you looking to make it available in the App Store, like Slingshot, Moonshot, or Vector, and that might streamline the process even more if you can just download it, build a wallet, and so on?

Jeff: To be honest, I think this is something we have to do, but probably not in the short period of time. We’re not a multi-billion company. We were a multi-billion token, but right now we’re not. So there are very limited things we can do, and it always depends on the market. We were just listed on Bitvavo, and we’re going to be integrated with Revolut—I don’t know if you guys know, but Europeans probably know it—which is the biggest app in Europe for financial services. We’re also talking with US institutions, centralized exchange, and Robinhood. If we expand to more areas and users can use our product, use our chain, buy our token easily, we’ll consider launching an app. Launching an app takes more time, and right now, it’s just not cost-efficient for us to do. So yeah.

Q: As someone from the East, not speaking for everyone but offering your perspective, what’s the general sentiment from China and the broader region, especially from outside our US-centric bubble?

Jeff: I think it’s complicated because Chinese or Asian builders are a big chunk of all these builders around the world. If you look at the CMC top hundred tokens or famous tier-1 chains, lots of their founders are Asian or Chinese—like Hyperliquid, with founders based in Singapore, Chinese background. These people are builders who want to build for crypto, but right now, everybody is waiting for news from Trump, waiting for institutions, ETFs, and stuff. It’s like a new norm that shows the US market is the main driven reason for the crypto market. Before this cycle, Bitcoin and NASDAQ weren’t that related. But now, if the stock market goes down, Bitcoin goes down. I bought my first Bitcoin 12 years ago, and at that time, we said if the stock goes down, Bitcoin should go up—it’s a risk-reverse kind of asset. Now it seems when the stock market goes down, when the US market goes down, when there are more interest rates, Bitcoin go down. I think it’s a new norm, and everything is shifting. In general, people aren’t against this—they’re just against this cycle. In my mind, most people around me, even rich people, are taking a loss here. Everyone is waiting for the second half to see what we can do.

Q: When do you see that second half actually beginning? Do you see it more like in March or April? Or maybe, do you see it maybe in the fall?

Jeff: I think it depends on a few reasons. First is the general economy. If the general economy is going up, that definitely starts this. Second, I think it needs some heroes to raise something new—like Pump.Fun did this and also in late 2023, ordinals did this too; everybody is hyping in Ordinals Revolution—not the show, but the real revolution, the real revolution—and Bitcoin, BTCFi, Bitcoin Layer2 started in 2024. Then Pump,Fun MEMEs on Solana, and Goats, AI16z, Virtual, AiXBT started last—the vibe for AI. Now BNB chain is trying to do something; they call themselves the AI Initiative Chain, whatever today. That’s great, it makes sense. We’re trying to do an AI chain as well because people are too lazy. Degens are too lazy—they don’t have the time and patience like we had eight years ago to discover everything by ourselves, to read the contract. Nobody reads contracts; they just click. They want to go to the casino without gas fees, buy stuff, make money, and withdraw. So I think somebody needs to stand out, bring new narratives, do something so hyped that everybody can enjoy and have fun, and then something goes after this. I don’t know—probably May or June. I don’t think in March. Let’s see.

Q: I've one more question about the wizard, the AI. Will it be like mobile friendly? Will I be able to use my meta mask on my phone and go do it? So I can do that.

Jeff: Definitely. But in the first version, we’re not integrating with the wallet. It’s risky because we internally tested this with some community members, and some people actually lost money. We paid them back the money lost. I’m not saying this is bad quality—I’ve always been transparent—but relying on AI to sign for you is kind of risky. So we’re definitely not shipping the AI wallet integration this week. Definitely not.