Giulio Xiloyannis, X Hall of Flame

Crypto punters shouldn’t be throwing extra cash at AI agents for trading — just stick to what you’d invest if you were trading solo since there will still be losers, a crypto venture capitalist says.

“Trading is always a zero-sum game,” Web3 venture capital studio LiquidX co-founder Giulio Xiloyannis tells Hall of Flame.

“There is always somebody that has to lose money for somebody to make money,” says the entrepreneur, who is originally from Spain and is now based in Malaysia. He explains that while it may not be at the exact moment, “ultimately you gotta exit to somebody to realize your value.”

The 35-year-old believes AI agents are the “strongest proposition” he has seen in the industry but warns that the system cannot change market fundamentals.

It is “mathematically impossible” for AI agents to make the overall market “more profitable,” the former fashion entrepreneur turned crypto bro reiterates.

For that reason, traders should avoid the temptation to “give more budget” to the latest shiny *toy* in crypto, Xiloyannis suggests. “Your risk allocation should be dependent on the asset category, not on who trades it,” he warns.

But AI agents do give the ordinary everyday battlers something they didn’t have before, “time:”

“By having an AI agent, the ideal version is another version of yourself, but with their eyes 24/7 on the charts.”

AI agents also “level the playing field” for the average person trying their luck in the crypto market against professional high-frequency traders who are “raking in a lot of value from retail traders,” Xiloyannis says.

Oh, and AI agents don’t get caught out by cognitive biases like humans do.

“The human mind, the emotions, are the biggest enemy of the trader,” he declares.

How did Giulio Xiloyannis build his X following?

Xiloyannis has 496,000 followers on X, but he modestly admits that being a founder in the crypto space makes it way easier to rack up followers than in the traditional tech industry.

In the crypto world, he explains, there is “a lot more founder centricity than product centricity” because crypto users have a financial stake in the project, which isn’t always true for Web2.

“In Web2, aside from some exceptions from Elon Musk etc, most of the focus is on the product,” he says.

“The average Apple user doesn’t care too much about Tim Cook, but the shareholders do,” he adds.

“In crypto, most of the balance, founder versus product, is a lot more skewed to the founder; that is because people become investors a lot earlier on Web2.”

Xiloyannis saw the focus on founders over products firsthand when his company, LiquidX, acquired the popular gaming NFT collection Pixelmon in 2022, and his follower count jumped over 100,000.

“Pixelmon had a huge community; it had over 100,000 users. The downside was that the founder had heavily underdelivered on the promises. There was a lot of community unhappiness; the community was on the verge of breaking,” he explains.

“When we acquired it, we said we are going to save this. It had an immediate springboard effect that transferred over to us being their hope. LiquidX became very well known, and I got over 100,000 followers,” he adds.

What type of content does Giulio Xiloyannis do?

Xiloyannis says his style of “content is very different from the average Web3 founder.”

“I write based on a longer entrepreneurial journey that I’ve had, when the average Web3 founder is in their 20s, very smart people, but haven’t been around the block yet,” he explains.

He is also drawn to content from “founders that share their founding experience.”

“It’s rare but super valuable,” he says.

“Founders willing to talk about their day-to-day problems are great. Ultimately, it is lonely being a founder; you are facing a lot of stuff that is not new to other founders, so being able to read deep content.”

Predictions for Giulio Xiloyannis?

Xiloyannis is “ultra bullish” on crypto gaming and AI, believing it will “explode” and take a significant share of the global market.

“Right now, we are sub 1% of the gaming market and insignificant in the AI market; I believe both categories will start to see a penetration curve of 10-12%, in the span of two years,” he says.

“By the end of 2026, we’ll be at 10% of gaming penetration.”

As for the answer every crypto trader wants from a VC, are AI coins worth a punt right now?

Xiloyannis believes the AI crypto tokens “that represent an underlying agent that is an investment agent are more interesting than pure AI memecoins.”

While AI memecoins help “create awareness over something that is happening, they don’t have intrinsic longevity; the longevity is dependent on the cultural movement,” he explains.

But if the AI hype keeps going, AI memecoins might still be on the rollercoaster for a while, he suggests.

“Longevity doesn’t seem to lie in the underlying fundamentals of the coin.”

Ciaran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He’s also a standup comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.