"It's been a dazzling day." Today, my friends' circle has been flooded with news about Binance and OpenAI, and the "palace drama" in the AI industry has come to a climax. The crypto field has also achieved some kind of "victory."

On the same day, the two most important companies in the crypto and AI industries changed their CEOs

On November 20th, CZ, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, commented on the relevant tweets regarding the OpenAI and Sam Altman incident, stating that "knowing when to give up control of the company you founded is one of the most difficult decisions."

On November 22nd, Binance, a large-scale cryptocurrency exchange, announced a resolution with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) regarding historical registration, compliance, and sanction issues. Following this, Binance founder CZ announced his resignation as CEO.

Related reading: "Fine of 4.3 billion US dollars, CZ resigns, sorting out all information points of Binance's settlement with US regulators".

CZ stated in a tweet that although this decision is emotionally difficult, he must take responsibility for past mistakes for the benefit of the community, Binance, and himself. Binance's newly appointed CEO, Richard Teng, expressed in a post that he feels honored and humbly accepts this role.

On the same day, OpenAI announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement to have Sam Altman return as CEO with a new board of directors (Chairman Bret Taylor, members Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo), and they are currently working on the details of the collaboration. Later, Sam Altman announced his return to OpenAI, stating "I love OpenAI, and everything I've done in the past few days has been to keep this platform and its mission aligned."

This statement marks the end of a four-and-a-half-day tense situation, during which OpenAI, as one of the world's leading artificial intelligence developers, has been in a state of uncertainty. Almost all 770 employees have threatened to resign and join Microsoft with Altman if the company's board of directors does not allow Altman to return.

AI and Crypto are often mentioned together as two disruptive technologies on the ladder of human progress, bringing unprecedented possibilities to the digital age. Over the past period of time, the narrative of AI and Crypto has had its ups and downs, and the coincidence of Binance and OpenAI today is just a small footnote in this wave.

徘徊和炒作，Web3 和 AI「姻缘不解」

Wandering and Hype, Web3 and AI "Destined to be Together"

Since the beginning of this year, the concept of "AI+Web3" has seen a significant increase in both the number and amount of financing. Just in November, there have been three large financing deals. On November 8th, the decentralized AI computing platform Ritual announced a $25 million financing round. On November 15th, the 3D generative AI platform Atlas announced two rounds of financing totaling $6 million. On November 20th, the generative AI infrastructure public chain BP-FLAC announced a $10 million financing round.

Related reading: "Inventory of the latest financing projects for "AI+Web3" concepts".

According to Coingecko data, its AI sector has included 96 projects related to Web3, with a total market size of up to 6.51 billion US dollars. However, the concept of "AI+Web3" has not always been heavily supported by capital, as evidenced by the well-known crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, which has briefly wavered between AI and Web3.

Capital's Dilemma Between AI and Web3

On May 26th of this year, the official website of Paradigm underwent changes, stating that they are now a "research-driven technology investment company" instead of a company that specializes in investing in "disruptive encryption/Web3 companies and protocols".

But perhaps Paradigm also has its own helplessness.

Looking at the cryptocurrency market, the secondary market is still in a bear market, with trading volume continuing to shrink and increasing regulatory pressure from the United States. The money raised cannot be invested in the Web3 field, so the only option is to turn to AI.

Related reading: "Paradigm undergoes another paradigm shift, expanding from cryptocurrency to AI."

And the same goes for domestic VC, Tencent's investment in the Web3 field is also shrinking.

Since Immutable's $200 million financing in March, Tencent Investment has not announced any further investments in the Web3 field. BlockBeats has learned from multiple sources that Tencent Games and Tencent Cloud's investment teams still look at some Web3 projects, but rarely make a move. The same is true for investment entities associated with Tencent.

Insiders told BlockBeats that there are many investment companies owned by Tencent executives in Nanshan, Shenzhen. In the past, they actively sought out projects, but recently they have been less interested in Web3 and have shifted their focus to the AI field.

Related reading: "The Disappearance of Tencent's Blockchain and the "Goose Factory Gang" of Web3".

"Web3+AI" concept is frequently hyped

However, in May of this year, the emergence of the WorldCoin cryptocurrency project, founded by ChatGPT's Sam Altman, has made the concept of "AI+Web3" the new darling of the cryptocurrency world. At that time, cryptocurrency with the words GPT and AI continued to increase, breaking out of extreme market conditions of skyrocketing and plummeting, such as the AIDOGE cryptocurrency launched on April 18th, which rose 218.50% in just two days.

With the advent of the AI era, how can you prove that you are a unique human being in the digital environment while maintaining anonymity and privacy? There are many reasons for asking this question, but the real impetus for this demand is how to distinguish between artificial intelligence and humans as AI continues to advance.

Sam Altman is attempting to solve this problem through cryptocurrency and blockchain. WorldCoin has launched the open identity protocol World ID and developed the Orb device, which can scan a person's iris to verify their uniqueness and humanity, and assign them a "World ID" that can be used as a global digital passport.

Through the Proof of Personhood (PoP) credential, the World ID protocol enables everyone to prove their humanity online without relying on third-party institutions. This innovative identity verification method utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to maximize user privacy and achieves identity security through World ID managed by the users themselves. WorldApp not only serves as an "ID card" in the AI era, but also makes it easier for the general public to enter the encryption industry.

"As the world moves towards powerful AI systems, I believe it will be very important, perhaps even the most important component of wealth, if we can do something to ultimately redistribute wealth. Access to these systems may one day also be a crucial component of wealth. Additionally, it will become increasingly important to protect privacy from different perspectives as AI progresses." This is the main driving force behind WorldCoin's founder's desire to combine AI with the blockchain industry.

Except for Worldcoin, projects that hype the "Web+AI" concept have also received a lot of attention. The hottest one recently is TAO (Bittensor).

TAO (Bittensor) is a Crypto+AI concept project with a mission to establish a decentralized network that can compete with previously "only achievable by giant companies like OpenAI" models through unique incentive mechanisms and advanced subnetwork architecture. According to CoinGecko data, TAO once broke through $290 and is now priced at $253.16, with a 24-hour increase of 2.8%. TAO's circulating market value is about $1.502 billion, rising to 44th place in the cryptocurrency market value rankings.

Let different AIs collaborate with each other. This goal is ambitious, but how can it be achieved? Bittensor's answer is to establish a blockchain network and coordinate and operate it through mining incentives.

"Unveiling the mystery of AI + Crypto dark horse Bittensor (TAO), who are they?"

However, the adoption of cryptocurrencies has always been a difficult pill to swallow, and artificial intelligence also has its controversies. Combining the two will bring challenges to anyone who wants to maintain user growth and activity, and this will take some time. Therefore, the capital's hesitation between AI and Web3 is just considering how to maximize commercial interests. Today, when AI is hot, money will flow towards AI, and tomorrow when Web3 narrative rises again, money will rush towards Web3.

As ABCDE investment partner Lao Bai said, AI and Web3 are actually two completely different fields. AI requires concentrated computing power and massive data for training, which is a very centralized thing. Web3, on the other hand, is focused on decentralization. The two are not so easy to combine. However, due to the deeply ingrained belief that "AI changes productivity, blockchain changes production relations," there will always be people who continue to seek that point of integration.

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