Base TVL doubles in a month as pundits tip memecoins to drive adoption

The extremely crowded trade of "going long on AI, short on everything else" is undergoing a painful unwinding—markets are no longer satisfied with the "burn rate narrative." Mega-scale cloud providers must deliver real, visible revenue conversions alongside $1.1 trillion in capital expenditures. A power gap of 40-50 gigawatts, rising capital costs, and a macro paradigm shift from an era of "overspending" are turning AI trades from a matter of faith into a harsh test of monetization.

Nomura Securities believes that the AI investment narrative is mired in an internal contradiction: if hyperscale cloud providers accelerate capital expenditures, their free cash flow will continue to be drained, raising doubts about the sustainability of financing; if they slow down, it would indicate a loss of confidence in AI demand and profitability expectations. Both paths lead to sell-offs. The crowded long positions accumulated during the AI agent boom in September have triggered large-scale stop-losses under negative catalysts, spreading to US Treasury bonds, exchange rates, and commodity markets, resulting in systemic deleveraging.