SAN FRANCISCO, CA – As artificial intelligence dominates venture funding and headlines alike, some in crypto have begun to wonder whether the industry has missed its \u201cChatGPT moment\u201d \u2014 or worse, whether capital is permanently rotating away.<\/p>\n
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, rejects that framing outright.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would completely dispute this framing,\u201d Qureshi said in an interview with CoinDesk at NEARCON 2026. \u201cLess than 1% of AI users are paying. That means 99% are using the free tier. Crypto doesn\u2019t have a free tier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comparisons between AI\u2019s explosive consumer adoption and crypto\u2019s trajectory misunderstand the nature of the products, he argued. \u201cThere is no free Bitcoin. There\u2019s no free Ethereum,\u201d he said, noting that while roughly 80% of Americans have tried some form of AI tool, about 15% have owned crypto \u2014 a figure he calls \u201ca mass-market phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Qureshi, the better lens is global utility, particularly in payments<\/a>. Stablecoins, he noted, have grown steadily regardless of price swings. \u201cStablecoin supply has been growing 50% year over year,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exponential growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Qureshi said the underlying fundamentals of crypto remain intact even if sentiment has cooled.<\/p>\n Following the money<\/p>\n Venture dollars have undeniably shifted toward AI. But Qureshi views that less as an indictment of crypto and more as the market doing what markets do.<\/p>\n \u201cMoney is a leading indicator,\u201d he said. \u201cHuman beings respond to money \u2014 they don\u2019t respond to the reality on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Crypto, even after multiple drawdowns, remains a $2 trillion asset class. And unlike AI giants such as OpenAI, which employ thousands, crypto projects often scale with lean teams.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have any 9,000-person companies like OpenAI \u2014 and that\u2019s a good thing,\u201d Qureshi said. \u201cCrypto is incredibly high leverage as a technology. You don\u2019t need very many people to build things that are world scale.\u201d<\/p>\n He sees the recent contraction as a correction after years of overfunding. \u201cTo the extent that there were too many people building too many things in crypto, the market\u2019s correcting that. That\u2019s capitalism doing its job.\u201d<\/p>\n