Virtuals Protocol is another coin that looks great until you dive deeper and look at the details. I know you got into crypto to get rich, and I want to help you not get ripped off by projects that, according to me, obviously suck. I say that after researching thousands and thousands of altcoins and then using the tools that I have, like AI, to dive deeper into all the critical issues that are not being covered by almost anyone talking about Virtuals Protocol. Everything I share here is my opinion, not financial advice.
Virtuals is all this hype about AI agents, but really, Virtuals to me is just more of a meme coin. The Virtuals Protocol promises an economy of autonomous AI agents operating on a blockchain, but in my opinion it's all crap. The AI agents can have their own tokens, wallets and identities, but they can't have their own websites. You traders can speculate on AI-themed projects, like the Virtuals agent token I covered in AIXBT Realistic Crypto Price Prediction: Why I Think It's $0, but is the AI actually running on the blockchain?
Is the AI Actually Running on the Blockchain?
Now, most people don't think that's important, but the reality of what is happening is you're buying tokens attached to AI software running somewhere else. If I told you that I've got a Jerry coin that's running on top of ChatGPT, that I just created this thing and it's a ChatGPT plugin, would you think that was valuable? No. Because putting an AI agent's token on a blockchain doesn't mean you've got the AI itself on the blockchain.
The infrastructure for the entire idea of all this stuff doesn't exist to make it a reality. I mean, ICP could make a lot of this a reality, but the fact is that Virtuals Protocol is not built that way. Almost nothing that matters is built on the blockchain, except some of the tokens that can send transactions.
With everything being off-chain, that means all the AI agents can get hacked into oblivion, which is a huge concern with AI today. You can't trust any of it. You can't audit it. You can't verify it. You might as well just use the ChatGPT plugin and stick a coin on that.
To me, almost all of crypto is an absolute lie. In my opinion, everything except ICP is just a lie in crypto, which is why I believe crypto mass adoption will only happen through ICP. I'm trying to wake as many of you up as I can. I'm trying to red pill you in crypto so that you see what an absolute lie almost everything is, and I see Virtuals Protocol as just another one, because the marketing makes it sound like, "Oh, we're decentralized AI," and no, it's just a new way to sell meme coins. That's what it is. I ran into the same thing again and again when I asked which ones are real AI in CoinGecko's Top 50 AI Coins Reviewed.
What Is On-Chain and What Is Off-Chain
Let's look at the facts. These are according to the technical documentation. On-chain, on Base, you have:
- ERC-20 tokens representing AI agents, but not the AI agents themselves.
- Wallet ownership and token transfers, but interacting with the wallets requires stuff that's not on-chain, which makes things insecure and hackable. You can lose your money.
- Trading pools and bonding curves. Again, these are on-chain, but they have to be interacted with by stuff that's off-chain, which can be hacked, spoofed, phished, drained, etc. How many times do you need to see things get hacked, like Binance, before you realize this is all going down? I'm yelling timber. It's going down. This is not sustainable.
- Smart contracts for payments and commerce. Yes, absolute basic stuff, but this stuff is almost completely worthless, because I can tell you, having a website, almost everybody pays with a credit card.
This idea that all these random people who aren't in crypto are just going to start using all this stuff that's built completely insecurely, that's hackable and keeps getting hacked? It's not going to happen. All right? It's not going to happen. It's delusional. And you've got companies saying that they don't want their stocks tokenized. All of crypto is insanely delusional to me, because this is the reality with Virtuals Protocol: yes, that is the stuff that's on-chain, but look at all the stuff that's off-chain.
- The large language models are off-chain.
- AI model weights and neural network execution are off-chain.
- Agent runtimes, memory systems and integrations are off-chain.
- Hosted compute services and external APIs are all off-chain.
So what does this mean? All the off-chain stuff can't actually be owned or controlled by any of the stuff on-chain. You are just taking a leap of faith that the tokens you have matter at all to all this stuff off-chain. That's where the critical flaw and, in my opinion, the big lie is. The blockchain handles the money and the ownership, but that's worthless. All kinds of blockchains can do money and ownership. All the external computing handles all the intelligence. A smart contract recording an AI payment is not executing the AI model. A decentralized wallet, which can't even be accessed in a truly decentralized way, doesn't make the brain decentralized. It's a big part of why I say most cryptocurrencies don't need a token.
Guys, you're getting lied to so repeatedly in crypto that you take the money and the intelligence for granted. I'm thinking of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard has been taken captive and there are four lights, and the guy holding him keeps telling him there are five. That's crypto. There are four lights. There's one thing in crypto that really has breakthrough technology, and that's ICP, and the rest of crypto is telling you that's a rug pull and all this other stuff is great. And crypto is telling you it's just speculation, that there's not even any value here. That's a lie.
If it's not all on-chain, I believe it's useless in the future, because AI will destroy everything that's not on-chain, and you're going to have to rebuild everything on-chain to keep it secure and to get it interoperable. So this setup with Virtuals Protocol sucks, and almost nobody has enough of a brain or takes enough time to actually look this stuff up before they show you how the price is going to go up. To me, this is doomed.
The Google Cloud Connection
Then look at the Google Cloud connection. Virtuals uses Google Cloud technologies in very important parts of its AI infrastructure. So exactly why are we excited about Virtuals when it's just using Google Cloud tech and infrastructure? Gemini 3 Flash, which is ghetto at this point, on Vertex AI powers reasoning and evaluation in parts of its agent system. Vertex AI Search helps match users with agents. It also offers hosted AI inference through API endpoints and keys, and developers access externally hosted models. And if a big name like Google is what gets you excited, I already explained why crypto partnerships almost never increase price long term.
Here's the thing, though. What happens when the cloud provider goes down? What happens if Google bans Virtuals Protocol? What happens if the API changes? What happens if the model provider raises prices? In my opinion, all the tokens can go to zero overnight. This is what you need to get: I believe all the tokens on everything on Virtuals Protocol can go to zero overnight. I mean, it can all go down 99% in a single day, and I'm just telling you, when it happens, I told you so, because I see no substance here. To me, this is all just fronting, LARPing and selling tokens.
The way I see it, it's the corrupt elites, the corrupt people at the top, selling to the ignorant people on the bottom. If you want to get out of being ignorant, you've got to learn to look at the details and to listen to people who will tell you the truth instead of telling you what you want to hear. This is the truth as I see it: Virtuals has a decentralized token that can depend on somebody else's centralized AI service to function. Virtuals Protocol, a quote "decentralized" token that can depend on somebody else's centralized AI service to function. Useless. I made a similar point about off-chain claims in Why I Think Aleph.im Is Going to Zero: An Honest Review.
The AI Agent Token Factory Is a Meme Coin Launchpad
All right, now let's look at the AI agent token factory. Here is how Virtuals tokenization works. You create and register an AI agent. You launch a tradable token representing that agent, and again, the agent itself is not on-chain. You use the default VIRTUAL-denominated bonding curve launchpad. I mean, this is just a meme coin launchpad, guys. This is just a meme coin launchpad. Traders buy and sell the agent token, trading fees fund agent operations, and then it also offers an alternative token launch.
So here is the problem with this: a token can attract buyers before the agent does anything. Price increases don't prove anything in crypto is useful. Trading volume doesn't prove anyone's actually using it. A launch can generate excitement without creating a sustainable business. Welcome to more of what I see as the big lies in crypto: that just because you have price action, there's a sustainable business. Almost nothing in crypto is a sustainable business, and the faster you all realize how much you're being lied to, the more unsustainable the entire thing will be.
For example, imagine a thousand people buy a new AI agent token, but the agent has zero paying customers. My brothers and sisters on this planet, I'm tired of seeing you all fooled and screwed over. Y'all look at charts and think, "Oh, it's alive." But there's no business reality. All these are just AI coins. Speculation. It's ridiculous.
Three Separate Things: The Agent, the Business and the Token
And I'm not saying Virtuals has no real technology. They have their Agent Commerce Protocol for hiring and paying agents. They have their agent-to-agent service coordination. They have wallets and payment infrastructure. And they have tokenized funding for AI developers and tools for building autonomous AI agents. Those are real capabilities, but there are three separate things here.
First, a functioning AI agent, which is not even on-chain. Second, an AI agent that generates sustainable economic value, which almost none of them will do. And third, a cryptocurrency token that captures value for investors, and even if the first two do work, that doesn't mean a token is necessarily going to capture value. As I just said, the agent could perform work without its token going up, and the token might appreciate without the agent doing anything.
So to me this is complete delusion, absolutely delusional. And welcome to crypto: absolutely delusional. Just crazy. Absolute insanity. I don't see any reason to buy any of these.
What Holding the VIRTUAL Token Actually Gets You
OK, well, if you're holding the VIRTUAL token, what do you actually get? It's the base currency for default token launches, liquidity pairing, trading routes, a payment currency, staking and ecosystem participation. But owning VIRTUAL doesn't give you ownership of Google Cloud or the AI models, which all of this is based on. The agent revenue doesn't go directly to you. Staking incentives aren't guaranteed investment profits.
Guys, this is such mind control, like the Matrix. This is so bad, and in my view all of crypto is like this. I just do video after video every day, ripping one coin or another, from Quant (QNT) to Polkadot (DOT). To me, they all look like frauds, scams and liars, and I believe everybody outside of crypto sees that. I'm hoping I can help those of you in the Matrix get out.
More tokens being launched doesn't matter. How much sustainable economic activity and demand exists for Virtuals? And I will show you an alternative going forward. If the whole investment thesis for this depends on more people launching tokens so more people can buy tokens, how is this different from a meme coin launchpad? This is just crypto hype. It's just smoke. There's no fire.
If you want to look at every agent token, ask who actually pays the AI agent. How much money comes from useful work rather than token trading? Almost none. Who actually pays the AI agent for its services? Almost nobody. And then there are the expenses.
What does it cost to run the AI model, the API and the infrastructure off the chain? Good question. Who's controlling that? Does holding the token do anything for that? No. Does the agent earn more than it costs to operate? Usually not. Almost never.
Then there is the token value. What economic benefit goes to the token holders? Almost nothing. This is so bad. It's so obviously bad. It's a complete speculation economy. There's hardly even a chance for a real, productive AI economy here. To me, it's just a joke.
How Virtuals Compares to ICP
Now, compare that to ICP. It's running AI on on-chain infrastructure. ICP canisters can actually execute applications. I have an entire Jerry Banfield ICP channel where all I do is talk about ICP every day, because my website is actually built on it, and I use Claude Fable to build my website. You can't do that with any other blockchain. To me, ICP is the realest thing in AI, and yet it's just trashed in the rest of crypto, because in my opinion the rest of crypto is based on complete lies.
Look at the difference. People look at Virtuals and think there's something great going on. It looks like fraud to me. I see it as blatant fraud and stealing and scamming, and in my opinion that's all it is.
If You Still Want to Hold VIRTUAL, Provide Liquidity on MaxFi
Let's look at MaxFi to wrap this up, because I'm grateful: MaxFi has sponsored my channel. For those of you who, no matter what I say, still want to hold Virtuals, well, at least you could make some money off of holding it. Maybe you don't agree with me at all, and you wonder why I do reviews like this. As I shared in Crypto Pays Me More to Promote What I Don't Believe In, I could make so much more money just telling you what you want to hear, at least in the short term. But I'd have no integrity in the long term, which doesn't bother most crypto YouTubers, but it bothers me. So I tell you what you need to hear.
If you're on MaxFi, you can be earning an APR by providing liquidity against your wrapped ETH. Right now, even though there hasn't been as much trading volume, you're still seeing 29% APR on the tiniest fee pool, and then you're getting 39% APR over 14 days on the 0.3% pool on Base. Those are the numbers I'm seeing at the time I'm sharing this, they move with trading volume, and they are not a promise of what you will earn. So if you're bound and determined to hold your VIRTUAL, at least you can provide liquidity on MaxFi when you join MaxFi using my link. I started out as a DeFi beginner myself, as I shared in I'm a DeFi Beginner and I'm Already Getting 2,281% APY.
And if you refer people to MaxFi like I do, you can earn. I've earned $32 referring people, which means people like you, just in the last month or so since I started this, have earned about $1,000 in liquidity fees off of just the eight wallets. That's an average of $100 plus per wallet that I've referred. So if you want to join MaxFi, join MaxFi at my link.
Six YouTube Channels and a Whole Jerry Banfield World
I do videos that I hope will help you cut through the BS in crypto and help you find better ways to make money with your crypto. And I've got a lot more for you on my website at jerrybanfield.com. I'm an entire brand. I've got six YouTube channels.
If you enjoy listening to me talk, then I'd invite you to check out my Jerry Banfield vlogs channel, which you can get a feel for in Jerry Banfield Day in My Life Vlogs: Crypto, Tennis, AA. That channel really gets people going and commenting. I just share my day-to-day real life, and people go nuts in the comments, talking about how crazy I am for just telling the truth. I'm telling the truth in crypto, and that's scandalous. I'm telling the truth on my vlog. How dare I just say what's going on?
It's the same thing with my dating channel. I just talk about real experiences with dating, and then people go nuts. I've got music. I talk about YouTube. I've got an ICP channel, and I've got this Crypto Reviews channel, where you can go through my Crypto Reviews playlist for more reviews like this one.
Then, if you're on my website, I've got all kinds of stuff for you, if you enjoy buying, because I do this for money. Let's be real. This is what I do full time. I do it for money, and I'm good at it. If you want to be a part of that, I invite you to go on jerrybanfield.com. I just got some Jerry Banfield mugs and Jerry Banfield posters. If you like meme coins, I have a game where you can try, in real time, to see how high you can get your meme coin up to, which I introduced in Meme Coin Dynasty Launch. I have games, and I've got books, including my life story.
I'm a whole brand, a whole Jerry Banfield world. So thanks for being in my world, and I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.