The journey of cryptocurrency trading constantly evolves and has been nothing short of revolutionary. Right from the start, the cryptocurrency landscape has been referred to as the “wild west” due to its nature of decentralisation and minimal oversight. However, now the space consists of increasingly sophisticated and regulated financial products and the transformation has been profound. The shift in perception has been a critical development in driving the need for robust frameworks that foster institutional adoption and, crucially, boost investor confidence.

In its infancy, crypto trading was the domain of early tech evangelists and a niche community of retail investors leveraging the premise of decentralised permissionless finance. Bitcoin embodied this concept, and exchanges with varying degrees of transparency facilitated the trading of bitcoin and the introduction of other altcoins. Liquidity was thin, price swings were extreme and the lack of regulation meant significant risks for participants.

The “wild west” held huge appeal due to the promise of innovation and the disruption of traditional finance. Yet this unregulated environment also bred systemic vulnerabilities, i.e., frequent exchange hacks, pump-and-dump schemes and a lack of consumer protection. Back then, events such as the Mt. Gox collapse deterred larger financial institutions and a broader retail audience from engaging in digital assets.

The maturation phase

As the crypto market cap swelled, particularly during the ICO boom of 2017 and subsequent bull runs, so did the demand for regulatory oversight. Most regulators adopted a wait-and-see approach; however, incidents within the space, driven by market volatility and concerns over illicit financing, pushed the agenda for regulation forward.

The perception and overall sentiment of regulatory oversight have shifted. It is now a common concept that effective regulation is not about stifling innovation, but about supporting and enabling growth and integrating crypto into the broader financial system.

 Regulation: enabling trust and institutional access

 What’s underpinning the regulatory shift happening within the industry?  It is the recognition that regulation isn’t a hindrance but rather a catalyst for trust and adoption. An example of this is the recent approval of spot bitcoin and ethereum ETFs in major financial markets. These investment products provide institutional and retail investors with exposure to the underlying cryptocurrency through regulated platforms, unlocking massive liquidity and further labelling cryptocurrency as a viable asset class. This development was unimaginable a few years ago.

The European Union's comprehensive Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, which began to be phased in 2024, is another huge milestone for the evolution of cryptocurrency trading. MiCA aims to create a harmonised regulatory framework across all EU member states, covering the issuance of crypto-assets, their public offering and the services provided by Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs). With the European Union leading the way here, other major government bodies will surely follow.

While the early crypto market was a hotbed for speculative assets such as memecoins, the maturation within the space has led to a demand for trading ‘blue-chip’ tokens. These are typically the most liquid and well-capitalised cryptocurrencies that have proven their resilience across various market cycles. Traders are increasingly gravitating towards these more stable assets, seeking long-term growth potential rather than chasing the more risky, fleeting crypto trends. Providers are also leaning towards offering these types of assets as part of their commitment to responsible trading.

The "wild west" era of crypto trading is fast becoming a distant memory, replaced by a new paradigm of regulated innovation. This evolution is not just vital for the long-term sustainability and mainstream adoption of digital assets, but also for building a more secure and accessible global financial system.

- Patrick Murphy, chief commercial officer, Eightcap

Artificial intelligence is transforming the technology landscape, and it’s not just traditional players like Nvidia and Google that are shaping the future. A new, decentralized movement is emerging — one that merges AI and blockchain to create open, scalable and trustless infrastructure.

As AI systems demand increasingly powerful compute and reliable data systems, crypto-native platforms are stepping up. These systems aren’t just offering alternatives, they’re beginning to power real workloads and reimagine how AI is built and governed.

Decentralized compute is getting real

The idea of decentralized GPU networks where users rent compute on demand and hardware owners earn income by sharing idle resources was once seen as futuristic. Today, it's rapidly becoming operational, with platforms supporting live AI inference and training tasks.

io.net is one of the leaders in this space. With over 10,000 active nodes distributed, it delivers scalable compute-on-demand via decentralized infrastructure. The network uses advanced technologies like Ray-based distributed systems and proof-of-work/time-lock mechanisms to ensure reliability and efficient coordination.

Meanwhile, Aethir is positioning itself as an enterprise-grade alternative to traditional GPU clouds. With more than 400,000 high-end GPU containers onboarded including over 3,000 NVIDIA H100 and H200 units, Aethir is designed for performance-heavy AI workloads. Its network continues to scale as new cloud hosts join to meet demand across AI and gaming.

These platforms don’t just provide compute, they tokenize it. Through native incentives, they encourage participation from hardware providers and validators, while offering developers a scalable and often more cost-effective alternative to traditional cloud solutions. 

Building a decentralized AI stack

Decentralized compute is just the starting point. An entire AI infrastructure is forming around blockchain-native principles such as transparency, verifiability and user ownership.

Model hosting is being reimagined by projects like Bittensor, which offers peer-to-peer training and inference across a global network. Its subnet architecture allows participants to contribute models, compete on performance and earn rewards, all without centralized oversight.

Data infrastructure is evolving, too. Filecoin has emerged as a decentralized storage solution capable of supporting large-scale AI datasets. Organizations like Singularity and Kite AI are now leveraging Filecoin to store not just raw data, but metadata and training resources as well, paving the way for private and decentralized data pipelines.

Investing in the future: AI tokens vs. big tech

For investors, crypto-native tokens offer a fundamentally different kind of exposure to the AI boom. While traditional equities like Nvidia or AMD provide access to the hardware and infrastructure layers of enterprise AI, tokens like Fetch.ai and Bittensor represent ownership in open, decentralized networks.

These projects are experimenting with peer-to-peer training, token-governed inference markets and decentralized agent economies. While riskier and more experimental than legacy tech companies, they also align with a bottom-up vision of AI, one that values participation, integrity and open access to compute and data.

What’s next

As decentralized AI ecosystems mature, a number of groundbreaking innovations are beginning to take shape:

The road ahead

The convergence of AI and crypto is no longer theoretical, it’s becoming an architectural shift in how intelligence is created, deployed and governed. If AI is to remain inclusive and secure, it must move beyond the closed, black-box systems.

Blockchain’s transparent, programmable infrastructure offers a compelling alternative. As decentralized networks scale, we’ll likely see an increasing number of AI applications built on-chain and governed by tokens, executed by global contributors and owned by the communities they serve.

Disclaimer: The author may hold personal positions in some of the tokens mentioned.

-  Leo Mindyuk, chief executive officer, ML Tech 

As always, get the latest crypto news from coindesk.com and market updates from coindesk.com/indices.

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