The AI revolution in trading should be a game-changer, but instead, it’s become a quick money grab. Everywhere you turn, yet another ChatGPT wrapper is being marketed as the next big thing for crypto traders. The promises? “AI-powered insights,” “next-gen trading signals,” “perfect agentic trading.” The reality? Overhyped, overpriced, and underperforming vaporware that doesn’t scratch the surface of what’s truly needed.
Saad Naja is a speaker at the AI Summit during Consensus 2025, Toronto, May 14-16.
AI should be designed to augment the trader experience, not sideline it. Companies like Spectral Labs and Creator.Bid are innovating with AI agents but risk heading toward vaporware status if they fail to deliver real utility beyond surface-level GPT wrappers. They have an overreliance on Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT without offering any unique utility, prioritizing AI buzzwords over substance and AI architecture transparency.
AI Agents Should Augment Trading
Combining AI and trading is a transformative leap, for humans to make trading gains more effectively with powerful foresight, investing less time, but not to replace humans from the trading equation entirely. Traders don’t need another emotionless agent with unfettered agency. They need tools that help them trade better, faster, and more confidently in environments that simulate real market volatility before going trading in the real markets.
Too many GPT wrappers rush to market with fluffy, half-baked agents that prey on fear, confusion, and FOMO. With barely-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) and little transparency, some of these AI trading “solutions” reinforce set and forget bad habits.
Trading isn’t just about hyper speed or automation, it’s about thoughtful decision-making. It’s about balancing science with intuition, data with emotion. In this first wave of agent design, what’s missing is the art of the trader’s journey: their skill progression, unique strategy development, and fast evolution through interactive mentorship and simulations.
Just Fancy Calculators
The real innovation lies in developing a meta-model that blends predictive trading LLMs, real-time APIs, sentiment analysis, and on-chain data, while filtering through the chaos of Crypto Twitter.
Emotion and sentiment do move markets. If your AI Trader agent can’t detect when a community flips bullish or bearish, or front-run that signal, it’s a non-starter.
GPT Wrappers rejecting emotion-driven market moves offer lower-risk, lower-reward gains within portfolio optimization. A better agent reads nuance, tone, and psycholinguistics, just as skilled traders do.
And while 20 years of high-quality trading data spanning multiple cycles, markets and instruments is a great start, true mastery comes through engagement and progression loops that stick. The best agents learn from data, people and thrive with coaching.
Better to Lose Pretend Money
Financial systems intimidate most people. Many never start, or blow up fast. Simulated environments help fix that. The thrill of winning, the pain of losing, and the joy of bouncing back are what build resilience and shift gears from sterile chat and voice interfaces.
AI Trader agents should teach this, back-test and simulate trading comeback strategies in virtual trading environments, not just of successful trades but comebacks from the unforeseen events. Think of it like learning to drive: real growth comes from time on the road and close calls, not just reading your state’s handbook.
Simulations can show traders how to spot candlestick patterns, manage risk, adapt to volatility, or respond to new tariff headlines, without losing their heads in the process. By learning through agents, traders can refine strategies and own their positions, win or lose.
Before My Bags, Win My Trust
AI Agents’ life-like responses are fast improving to being indistinguishable from human responses through conversational and contextual depth (closing the “Uncanny Valley” gap). But for traders to accept and trust these agents, they need to feel real, be interactive, intelligent, and relatable.
Agents with personality, ones that vibe like real traders, whether cautious portfolio managers or cautious portfolio optimizers can become trusted copilots. The key to this trust is control. Traders must have the right to refuse or approve the AI Agent’s calls.
On-demand chat access is another lever, alongside visibility of trading gains and comebacks built on the sweat and tears of real traders. The best agents won’t just execute trades, they’ll explain why. They’ll evolve with the trader. They’ll earn access to manage funds only after proving themselves, like interns earning a seat on the trading desk.
Fun, slick AAA aesthetics and progression will keep traders coming back in shared experiences opposed to solo missions. Through tokenization and co-learning models, AI agents could become not just tools, but co-owned assets — solving crypto’s trader liquidity problem along the way.
First-to-market players must be viewed with healthy skepticism. If Trader AI Agents are going to make a real impact, they must move beyond sterile chat interfaces and become dynamic, educational, and emotionally intelligent.
Until then, GPT wrappers remain what they are slick distractions dressed up as innovation, extracting more value from users than they deliver, as the AI token market correction indicated.
The convergence of AI and crypto should empower traders. With the right incentives and a trader-first mindset, AI Agents could unlock unprecedented learnings and earnings. Not by replacing the trader but by evolving them.
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