SAN FRANCISCO, CA – As artificial intelligence dominates venture funding and headlines alike, some in the cryptocurrency world have begun to wonder if the industry has missed its “ChatGPT moment” or, worse, if capital is permanently moving away.
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, rejects that framework out of hand.
“I would completely question this framework,” 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 does not have a free tier.”
Comparisons between the explosive consumer adoption of AI and the trajectory of cryptocurrencies 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 type of artificial intelligence tool, about 15% have owned cryptocurrencies, a figure he calls “a mass market phenomenon.”
For Qureshi, the best perspective is overall utility, particularly in payments. He noted that stablecoins have grown steadily regardless of price swings. “The supply of stablecoins has grown 50% year over year,” he said. “That’s exponential growth.”
Qureshi said the underlying fundamentals of cryptocurrencies remain intact even if sentiment has cooled.
following the money
It is undeniable that venture dollars have shifted toward AI. But Qureshi sees this less as a criticism of cryptocurrencies and more of the market doing what markets do.
“Money is a leading indicator,” he said. “Human beings respond to money, not to the reality on the ground.”
Cryptocurrencies, even after multiple drawdowns, are still a $2 trillion asset class. And unlike AI giants like OpenAI, which employ thousands of people, crypto projects often scale with small teams.
“We don’t have 9,000-person companies like OpenAI, and that’s a good thing,” Qureshi said. “Cryptocurrency is incredibly highly leveraged as a technology. It doesn’t take a lot of people to build things on a global scale.”
He sees the recent contraction as a correction after years of overfunding. “To the extent that there were too many people building too many things in cryptocurrencies, the market is correcting that. That’s capitalism doing its job.”
In fact, Dragonfly recently announced a $650 million fund, a move some observers called bold given the current market malaise.
“That’s the best time to double down,” Qureshi said. “Why would you want to double down when prices are high? If you’re raising money and deploying prices at all-time highs, that’s when you should be nervous.”
When asked if anything more existential had changed in cryptocurrencies in the past four months, he was blunt: “Have the fundamentals of the industry changed that much? No.”
Crypto and AI: convergence or mirage?
While Dragonfly is exploring investments at the intersection of cryptocurrencies and AI, Qureshi cautioned against assuming that AI will revive cryptocurrency momentum.
“Will AI save cryptocurrencies? Hell no,” he said. “AI agents using cryptocurrency are a long way off; it will take years.”
He sees a familiar pattern of crypto attaching to whatever technology trend is booming. “Are chatbots cool? Great, we have tokenized chatbots. Are agents cool? Great, you can buy layer one for agents,” he said. “As an investor, you just have to slow down.”
That doesn’t mean that the identity of cryptocurrencies 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 cryptocurrencies 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 the current pessimism to short time horizons and simple fatigue.
“People in the cryptocurrency world have a pathologically short time horizon,” he said. “Prices dropped many times.”
From ETF-driven rallies to tariff-induced pullbacks, volatility has defined the industry for more than a decade. The pattern, he suggests, is neither new nor fatal.
“This idea that because prices have gone down, no one is going to use stablecoins anymore? Absurd,” he said.
For Qureshi, the story is not about AI replacing cryptocurrencies, nor about their decline. It’s about cycles and patience.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s not a catastrophe.”
Read more: Kraken Co-CEO Could Trust AI with 100% of His Crypto; Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi is not convinced
