Cryptocurrencies could deliver a significantly better payoff from the artificial intelligence boom than traditional artificial intelligence stocks themselves, according to Jordi Visser, founder of Visser Labs and a seasoned financial market veteran with a three-decade career on Wall Street.
Speaking in an interview on Cointelegraph’s Trade Secrets podcast, Visser explained that the explosive, straightforward gains witnessed in popular AI equities are becoming increasingly difficult to repeat as valuations stretch and market dynamics shift. At the same time, a structural transformation is underway beneath the surface, driven by autonomous AI agents that are creating massive new organic demand for native crypto payments and tokenized assets.
"Without AI, I don’t think crypto would be going through this bull market," Visser stated, highlighting the deep macroeconomic interdependence forming between the two emerging asset classes.
As a direct result of this evolving thesis, Visser has expanded his personal portfolio holdings far beyond major layer-1 assets like Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana, building a much broader, diversified basket of alternative tokens designed to capture the impending wave of agent-driven economic activity. Visser’s extensive financial background includes serving as a managing director at Morgan Stanley, acting as chief investment officer at Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, and currently heading AI Macro Nexus Research at 22V.
AI is Crypto’s Smartphone Moment
The central pillar of the Wall Street veteran’s broader investment thesis is that autonomous AI agents will soon act as the primary interface for everyday digital interactions. In this near-future scenario, individuals will be able to instruct advanced software applications to execute complex trades, manage finances, and handle automated financial transactions on their behalf across decentralized networks.
"AI agents are effectively the same as the App Store or the smartphone for crypto," Visser noted, drawing a parallel to the technological catalysts that historically unlocked exponential consumer adoption and mobile software ecosystems.
In this scenario, users will direct their specialized agents while the software securely handles the back-end execution using digital assets. The growing ubiquity and utility of these autonomous software agents will inevitably drive a surge of economic activity in tokenized assets and instant crypto payments. This dynamic extends the lucrative investment opportunity far beyond the narrow group of hardware manufacturers and cloud computing giants currently supplying raw computing power.
Despite his enthusiasm for this structural tailwind, Visser’s outlook acknowledges potential risks, notably exposure to the very AI equity trade about which he has grown increasingly cautious. He identifies a severe downturn in the AI equity sector as a tangible threat that could temporarily drag down broader financial markets and retest recent crypto market lows.
"I don’t think that would end the bull market, but I definitely think it would retest the lows that we just saw," Visser cautioned.
The AI “Fireworks Show” Is Over
Visser revealed that he began actively reducing his exposure to memory chipmaker Micron as early as mid-May. He reached the conclusion that hedge funds, institutional players, and retail investors had become overcrowded in a narrow segment of the AI hardware trade, leaving valuations vulnerable to a correction.
"One of the reasons that Bitcoin and Ethereum were having such a hard time is because the focus was completely on AI," Visser explained.
The artificial intelligence sector had offered investors seemingly greener pastures backed by rapidly rising enterprise business revenue. For instance, Microsoft reported in late April that its cloud and AI business lines were generating revenue at an annualized rate of $37 billion, representing more than double the figure from the previous year. Similarly, memory manufacturer Micron reported in March that its fiscal second-quarter revenue had nearly tripled to $23.86 billion, underscoring the initial hardware spending frenzy.
However, investors navigating the AI sector now face a much less forgiving market environment. A comprehensive 100-stock AI portfolio tracked by Visser is up roughly 40% for the year, but has concurrently developed a higher degree of rolling volatility than Bitcoin over a 126-day measure.
Furthermore, mounting financing concerns have begun to weigh heavily on AI infrastructure providers, as the staggering costs required to build out massive data centers currently outpace the cash generated by their existing business operations. As a prominent example of this capital expenditure imbalance, Oracle reported spending $55.7 billion on capital expenditures during fiscal 2026 against just $32 billion in operating cash flow, forcing the company to raise $43 billion in debt financing to bridge the gap.
"I didn’t say AI was over. AI fireworks show is over," Visser remarked.
While he still anticipates several years of sustained fundamental growth in global computing demand driven by the proliferation of AI agents, he emphasizes that investors need to temper their forward expectations regarding corporate stock returns.
Visser Widens His Crypto Bets to Capture Broader Market Momentum
Until August, Visser’s crypto portfolio strategy remained strictly concentrated on Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. Although Bitcoin continues to hold its position as his single largest crypto allocation, he has steadily begun acquiring a much wider, diversified range of alternative tokens.
Among market indicators, Visser watches Dogecoin closely as a reliable barometer for returning retail investor enthusiasm, which he views as an indispensable ingredient for sustaining a healthy, broad-based market rally.
"They’re the energy of the space and they’re the ones that are going to fuel this as other people get involved," he said.
To systematically track and participate in this broader digital asset market expansion, Visser maintains an equally weighted index composed of 42 distinct tokens alongside four publicly traded equities. According to his data, this diversified index has successfully outperformed Bitcoin since June, and he intends to hold all of its constituent assets as market conditions evolve.
Privacy and data security represent another major thematic investment focus for Visser as artificial intelligence reshapes the digital landscape.
"I’m not betting on one company, but I believe in privacy," Visser noted.
He argues that the widespread deployment of advanced artificial intelligence will make privacy and digital identity protection drastically more critical as automated fraud, deepfakes, and other forms of digital abuse scale up. Established privacy-focused blockchain initiatives like Zcash and Monero fit directly into this long-term investment thesis, addressing structural security challenges that he believes traditional financial systems and centralized platforms will struggle to solve independently.
