SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – As artificial intelligence dominates venture capital and headlines, some in the cryptocurrency space are beginning to wonder whether the industry has missed its “ChatGPT moment,” or worse, whether capital is being permanently drained.
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly, flatly rejected this framework.
“I am completely against this framework,” Qureshi told CoinDesk in an interview at NEARCON 2026. “Less than 1% of AI users are paying. That means 99% of users are using the free tier. There is no free tier for cryptocurrencies.”
He believes that comparing the explosive consumer adoption of artificial intelligence to the trajectory of cryptocurrencies misunderstands the nature of the product. “There’s no free Bitcoin. There’s no free Ethereum,” he said, noting that while about 80% of Americans have tried some form of artificial intelligence tool, about 15% own cryptocurrency — which he called a “mass market phenomenon.”
For Qureshi, a better perspective is global utility, particularly in payments. He noted that stablecoins are growing steadily regardless of price fluctuations. “Stablecoin supply is up 50% year-over-year,” he said. “It’s exponential growth.”
Even as sentiment cools, cryptocurrency fundamentals remain intact, Qureshi said.
follow the money
There is no denying that venture capital has turned to artificial intelligence. But Qureshi believes this is less an indictment of cryptocurrencies than it is markets doing what markets do.
“Money is a leading indicator,” he said. “Human beings respond to money, not to reality.”
Even after multiple pullbacks, cryptocurrencies remain a $2 trillion asset class. Unlike AI giants like OpenAI, which have thousands of employees, crypto projects often scale through lean teams.
“We don’t have a company like OpenAI with 9,000 employees, which is a good thing,” Qureshi said. “Cryptocurrency as a technology is incredibly highly leveraged. You don’t need a lot of people to build something on a world scale.”
He sees the recent contraction as a correction after years of excess funding. “To the extent that there are too many people building too many things with crypto, the market is correcting that. That’s capitalism at work.”
In fact, Dragonfly recently announced a $650 million fund — a move that some observers considered bold given the current market downturn.
“This is the perfect time to double down on our efforts,” Qureshi said. “Why would you double down when prices are high? If you raise capital and deploy to historically high prices, that’s when you should be nervous.”
When asked if there had been some more existential changes in the cryptocurrency space over the past four months, he put it bluntly: “Have the fundamentals of the industry changed that much? No.”
Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence: convergence or mirage?
While Dragonfly is exploring investments at the intersection of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, Qureshi cautioned against assuming that artificial intelligence will revive cryptocurrency momentum.
“Will AI save cryptocurrencies? F*** no,” he said. “AI agents using cryptography are still far away – it will take years.”
He saw a familiar encryption pattern that goes hand in hand with any emerging technology trend. “Chatbots are exciting? That’s great — we have chatbots with tokens. Agents are exciting? That’s great — you can buy the first tier for agents,” he said. “As an investor, you have to slow down.”
This doesn’t mean that the cryptocurrency’s identity is straying away from its roots. Qureshi said recent suggestions that the industry has caved to Wall Street miss the point.
“A lot of people say cryptocurrencies have capitulated and become a tool of Wall Street. I think that’s foolish,” 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 use.”
Loop, don’t crash
Qureshi attributes much of today’s pessimism to short-term horizons and simple fatigue.
“People working in the cryptocurrency industry have a pathologically short-sighted outlook,” he said. “The price has dropped a lot.”
From ETF-driven gains to tariff-induced pullbacks, volatility has defined the industry for more than a decade. He believes this pattern is neither new nor deadly.
“This idea that no one will use stablecoins anymore because the price has dropped? Ridiculous,” he said.
For Qureshi, the story is not about artificial intelligence replacing cryptocurrencies, nor is it about the decline of cryptocurrencies. It’s about cycles and patience.
“Calm down,” he said. “This is not a disaster.”
Read more: Kraken’s co-CEO can trust 100% of his cryptocurrency to AI — Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi isn’t convinced