Theta Network is a crypto I see with a very high likelihood of going to zero. It looks like another one of these fake me-too cryptos that says it's doing AI and DePIN. But if you look at it, the technology is unimpressive. The team and the engineers working on it, it's hard to see who's actually doing anything. And the protocol overall looks like it's been a complete flop so far, outside of artificial price manipulation and hype that can easily be disproven.
The price chart tells the story
Theta came out in 2018. And you know what doesn't age well in crypto? Altcoins. Altcoins almost never keep up with even Bitcoin or Ethereum, let alone prove to be a better investment. This one came out back in 2018, it had a big bull market in 2021, and then almost all the gains from that bull market were dumped into oblivion. After that we had a manipulated pump, because for some reason people think this is an AI project. They're trying to get you to think this is an AI project, but I'm going to show you how fraudulent that appears to be from just a few minutes of research.
At a roughly $1.5 billion fully diluted market cap, this to me looks dangerously overvalued. That's my opinion based on what I see, not financial advice. So let's go through some of the key problems I see here. This is the kind of homework I'm constantly doing in my Money playlist, where I pull these coins apart one at a time.
Almost nothing is happening on-chain
First, if you look at the Theta Explorer, there's hardly anything happening on this. It's 16,000 transactions in the last 24 hours. Internet Computer by comparison has thousands of transactions per second, and that's real computation actually doing something. Theta is an old blockchain that does almost no actual computation on the blockchain. That matters, because it means when it's talking about things like AI, anything it's talking about is off-chain. Which means it's completely disingenuous when they're making a big deal and talking about things being "built on Theta."
I mean, MetaMask built on Theta? Trust Wallet? These are things that integrate a little tiny bit of Theta. They're making you think this is somehow built on Theta, but it's not. They've got a Theta wallet, and then MetaMask and Trust Wallet, which integrate a sliver of Theta, and that gets presented as if the whole thing is built on the chain.
Theta TV was hyped up and then went dead
And then there's Theta TV. Theta TV was so hyped up years ago. They won't even show you the public version of Theta TV now, because last time I checked this, it was so dead that nobody was even using it. So Theta TV: huge flop, and it was huge hype before. That's the pattern I keep coming back to with this project.
The team is almost all business people
Before we go further down that angle, let's look at the team. The site says "guided by experience," but who's actually building on this? You've got the leadership team, and it's head of strategy, business development, content, cloud operations, partnerships, and finance. That's a lot of business people. Where are the engineers building the actual protocol and the blockchain?
Because if you're holding the token, what you're really investing in is the ability of the engineers to build something that people actually want to use and build on because it's great technologically. This is almost all business people. If you look at a team like DFINITY, their technology is so far past anything else. If it wasn't for ICP, I wouldn't even invest in this space, and the technical staff they have is incredible. That's why they've made breakthroughs. They have one breakthrough after another that nobody else has. But on Theta, you look at the team and it's a leadership team and then advisors, and you have to ask where the actual engineers are who are getting paid to make this protocol better.
This is why so many cryptos just keep talking. They talk a big game, but they rarely put out anything that's actually impressive. Unlike Internet Computer, where Dominic puts out the world's first AI running on blockchain as a smart contract. If your AI is not running on the blockchain as a smart contract, you might as well just build it on Amazon Web Services.
The AI and "edge cloud" claims run on Amazon Web Services
Now look at how Theta Network describes itself. It says they're reinventing video Web3 infrastructure, the leading blockchain for decentralized cloud for AI, media, and entertainment. That's the language on ThetaToken.org: the leading blockchain for decentralized cloud for AI, media, and entertainment.
Well, no. First off, Internet Computer is that. On Internet Computer you can put five gigabytes on-chain for twenty-five dollars. It's just five dollars per gigabyte per year. You can run AI on-chain, and they have the biggest research and development team.
Now look at Theta's own data. They've been hyping up the Theta Edge Node, and the Theta Edge Node deployment is now available on the AWS blockchain node runners GitHub repository. They're not even hiding this. We don't even have to play hide and seek, and I do applaud them for making it easy to spot. Here's the truth: they're hyping up this Theta Edge Node, and it turns out you can just spin up a node for the Theta Edge Node right on Amazon Web Services. Does that sound decentralized to you? It doesn't sound decentralized to me that we're using Amazon Web Services.
Then go back to their landing page: reinventing AI at the edge, the leading blockchain for AI, media, and entertainment. The new cutting-edge thing they're talking about? You can just spin up a node on Amazon Web Services. This is why you need to watch and research. Search any crypto you want reviewed, search Jerry Banfield, and see what I have to say about it, because this is ridiculous.
And you think that's the end? It gets more ridiculous. Theta Edge Cloud, empowering AI teams with unrivaled GPU price-to-performance. So you go back to the Theta Edge Node deployment on AWS, and you realize you too can spin up an Amazon Web node, call that decentralized, and then get people to invest in your blockchain that ends up using Amazon Web Services. But it gets even worse. If you'd like to run a large language AI model, great, just use an OpenAI-compatible API. So we're basically talking about a ChatGPT plugin that runs on Amazon Web Services. You too can make a ChatGPT plugin, stick it on Amazon Web Services, and we'll call that "AI teams with unrivaled GPU price-to-performance." We'll call that reinventing video Web3 infrastructure. That's insane. That is completely disingenuous, and almost nobody holding this realizes it.
An ecosystem with almost nothing built on it
If you look into this, it's outrageous. The ecosystem they have here, there's almost nothing. Is anything actually built? You can't really build stuff on-chain with Theta. You can actually do this with Internet Computer. On Internet Computer, this is the only thing in crypto I see being totally genuine, with decentralized physical infrastructure and AI on-chain. And yet CoinMarketCap doesn't even want to include them, because this is tagged AI and big data on Theta Network, which is a joke. It's a joke, and it's not funny when people are losing money.
I'm here to help you try and get somebody who actually cares about you, somebody who looks through the deceptions on these cryptos. That's why I filmed this. If you want me to look through one with you, the door is open inside my community, where I help people see past the hype before they get sucked into these absolute junk coins. If you want any other coin reviewed, search Jerry Banfield for my opinion on it.