Tom Lee vs Jordi Visser on the AI Trade: Both End Up at Ethereum

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee says the synthetic intelligence (AI) commerce isn’t completed. He argues the subsequent leg runs by means of crypto fee rails constructed for software program brokers slightly than individuals.

Veteran macro investor Jordi Visser argued the reverse this week. Lee additionally chairs the largest company holder of ether, which provides his model of the thesis a direct monetary stake.

Why Lee Says Chips Were Only the First Leg

Lee, co-founder and head of analysis at Fundstrat, made the case on a panel hosted by the agency. He lined cellphones as an analyst in the early Nineties.

Motorola and the infrastructure suppliers led that cycle early. The bigger winners arrived later, specifically the tower firms spun out of the carriers, and Apple.

Lee expects the identical form now, with monetary providers as the downstream market. He has already known as AI capital spending fears a bullish market tell.

The Four Reasons Banks Cannot Bank Agents

Lee listed belief, proof of funds, lending, and tax assortment as the causes individuals constructed commerce round banks. Agents want none of these, he argued.

“It’s a mistake to suppose that that is going to be constructed on conventional monetary rails,” Lee said.

Bank ledgers should settle in a single nationwide foreign money. Money is changing into code, in line with Lee, so equities, gold, and tokens may all clear as fee.

Part of that rail already exists on paper. ERC-8183, a proposed Ethereum standard filed on Feb. 25, locks an agent’s fee in escrow till a chosen evaluator indicators off.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Davide Crapis co-authored it with three Virtuals Protocol engineers. It carries Draft standing, so nothing about it’s remaining.

Where Tom Lee and Visser Split on the AI Trade

Visser leads AI analysis at 22V Research and spent 20 years at Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, latterly as chief funding officer. He says AI’s easy money is over.

He now expects roughly 30% a 12 months as a substitute of the seven or eight occasions traders as soon as chased. Lee reads the identical compression as rotation.

The two converge on the vacation spot. Both count on fee-earning networks to soak up the movement, and each title Ethereum.

Ethereum trades close to $1,873 after gaining 19.7% over 30 days. It nonetheless sits 51% decrease throughout 12 months, and simply over 2% under its buying and selling worth the earlier day.

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Lee’s $11.8 Billion Reason to Prefer Ethereum

Lee chairs BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest company holder of ether. The firm disclosed 5.79 million ETH on July 27, near 4.8% of circulating provide.

Crypto and money holdings reached $11.8 billion. BitMine states the dependency plainly in its personal investor supplies.

“So our future worth for Bitmine inventory is closely dependent on the future worth of Ethereum,” Lee stated in the July chairman’s message.

Lee places the correlation between BitMine shares and ether at 90%. Anyone weighing his agent thesis can be weighing that stability sheet, which rallied this month on its ETH treasury bet.

The Numbers Do Not Match the Story Yet

Jansen Teng, co-founder and chief govt of Virtuals Protocol, shared the panel with Lee. His platform lets brokers maintain wallets and pay one another onchain, and his figures undercut the timeline.

Teng stated the launchpad for agent tokens has cleared about $15 billion in buying and selling quantity. Agent-to-agent commerce has settled roughly $500 million in a 12 months.

Speculating on brokers is due to this fact some 30 occasions bigger than brokers transacting. Both figures are company-reported and haven’t been independently verified.

Teng stated the brokers stored $2.5 million in revenue, and that the product has not reached product-market match (PMF). Virtuals commissioned the Fundstrat analysis and is a shopper of the agency.

Its VIRTUAL token trades close to $0.56, down 89% from a January 2025 peak, even after brokers began trading tokenized stocks onchain.

So the query isn’t whether or not the AI commerce ended. It is whether or not machine funds arrive earlier than the stability sheets betting on them want the story to work.

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