Speaking at Token2049 in Singapore, Eric Trump argued that the very AI trade that helped sap crypto prices could become its biggest accelerant. In his words, "The thing that's going to spawn the growth of digital assets by far the quickest is actually the AI trade." He added, "The faster our kind of friends on the other side of the aisle in AI can sprint toward their goal, the better this industry is going to do." The remarks came at one of the world's largest crypto gatherings.
To illustrate, Trump imagined telling an AI assistant to arrange a vacation. In that scenario, the agent would pay with a crypto wallet instead of using traditional currency. His takeaway: "The faster people embrace AI and technology, and the faster that gets integrated into people's life, the faster this industry is going to grow."
Claims about crypto's next growth driver deserve a close look at the numbers. Market Briefs covers crypto free every morning.
Trump attributed some of the decline from Bitcoin's $126,000 peak in October last year to investors offloading crypto in favor of AI equities. He pointed to the original cryptocurrency's rebound above $80,000 as a sign that "now it's cycling back out, and it's going back into crypto." As he put it, "We're seeing that, we're seeing prices go up" and "you're going to see money continuously cycle between the two."
Trump, the US President's second-oldest son and a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said the venture's flagship stablecoin is USD1. He also argued that as dollar-backed stablecoins expand, they may bolster appetite for US government debt. On tokenization, he said moving luxury real estate and art, and music revenues onto blockchains can open the door to more than just affluent insiders. "It's philanthropic in terms of giving people an opportunity to invest in things that they believe in that they could have never otherwise had the opportunity to invest in," he said.
He also revisited a familiar theme: his dislike of banks. He said banks did everything they could to hold back digital assets but are now racing to adopt them. "All of us in here beat the big banks because every single day you see another one" embracing cryptocurrency, Trump said. "It's because people dared to push back against major headwinds. And honestly, I think today we could all declare victory."
If he's right, crypto and AI are drawing from the same pool of capital, and that pool sloshes with each new narrative. That means AI hype can dent crypto until real use cases kick in, like AI agents spending from crypto wallets. For regular investors, the takeaway is simple: attention shifts, and when it does, prices often follow.
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