SAN FRANCISCO, CA – As artificial intelligence dominates both venture funding and headlines, some in crypto are beginning to wonder if the industry has missed its “ChatGPT moment” – or worse, if capital is permanently spinning away.
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, flatly rejects this framing.
“I would completely dispute this framing,” Qureshi said in an interview with CoinDesk at NEARCON 2026. “Less than 1% of AI users are paying. That means 99% are using the free tier. Crypto doesn’t have a free tier.”
Comparisons between AI’s explosive consumer adoption and crypto’s trajectory misunderstand the nature of the products, he argued. “There is no free Bitcoin. There is no free Ethereum,” he said, noting that while about 80% of Americans have tried some form of artificial intelligence, about 15% have owned crypto — a number he calls “a mass-market phenomenon.”
For Qureshi, the better lens is global utility, especially in payments. Stablecoins, he noted, have grown steadily regardless of price fluctuations. “Stablecoin supply has grown 50% year over year,” he said. “It’s exponential growth.”
Qureshi said the underlying fundamentals of crypto remain intact even as sentiment has cooled.
After the money
Venture dollars have undeniably shifted towards AI. But Qureshi sees it less as an indictment of crypto and more as the market doing what markets do.
“Money is a leading indicator,” he said. “People respond to money – they don’t respond to the reality on the ground.”
Crypto, even after multiple withdrawals, remains a $2 trillion asset class. And unlike AI giants like OpenAI, which employ thousands, crypto projects often scale with lean teams.
“We don’t have any 9,000-person companies like OpenAI — and that’s a good thing,” Qureshi said. “Crypto has incredibly high leverage as a technology. You don’t need very many people to build things that are on a world scale.”
He sees the latest decline as a correction after years of overfunding. “To the extent that there were too many people building too many things in crypto, the market corrects it. That’s capitalism doing its job.”
In fact, Dragonfly recently announced a $650 million fund — a move some observers characterized as bold given the current market crash.
“It’s the best time to double down,” Qureshi said. “Why would you want to double when prices are high? If you raise money and implement in all-time high prices, that’s when you should be nervous.”
Asked if anything more existential had changed in crypto over the past four months, he was blunt: “Did the fundamentals of the industry change that much? No.”
Crypto and Artificial Intelligence: Convergence or Mirage?
As Dragonfly explores investments at the intersection of crypto and AI, Qureshi cautioned against assuming that AI will revive crypto’s momentum.
“Should AI save crypto? F*** no,” he said. “AI agents using crypto are so far away – it’s going to take years.”
He sees a familiar pattern of crypto attaching itself to any tech trend that is on the rise. “Chatbots are exciting? Great – we have chatbots with tokens. Agents are exciting? Great – you can buy layer 1 for agents,” he said. “As an investor, you just have to slow down.”
This does not mean that crypto’s identity is moving away from its roots. Recent narratives suggesting the industry has capitulated to Wall Street miss the point, Qureshi said.
“There are a lot of people who say that crypto capitulated and became a tool of Wall Street. I think that’s stupid,” he said. “The whole point of bitcoin is that it encompasses everyone’s use of the same technology. No one’s use affects anyone else’s.”
Cycles, not collapses
Qureshi attributes much of today’s gloom to short time horizons and simple fatigue.
“People in crypto have a pathologically short time horizon,” he said. “The prices have dropped many times.”
From ETF-driven rallies to tariff-induced pullbacks, volatility has defined the industry for over a decade. The pattern, he suggests, is neither new nor fatal.
“This idea that because prices have fallen, no one is going to use stablecoins anymore? Absurd,” he said.
For Qureshi, the story is not about AI replacing crypto, nor about the decline of crypto. It’s about cycles – and patience.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s not a disaster.”
Read more: Kraken co-CEO could trust AI with 100% of his crypto – Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi not convinced
