저자: TomLee · 외국인
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암호화폐가 전통 금융을 대체하며 시장 규모가 수백조 달러로 확대될 것이라는 주장. 제인스트리트·테더 등 소규모 조직의 높은 수익성을 예로 들어, 향후 10년 내 상위 10대 금융기관 중 5곳이 크립토 네이티브가 될 것이라 전망. 촉매로 클래리티법 통과 가능성(시장 56%보다 높다고 봄), 친암호화폐 정책, 워시 연준의장, 인구구조 변화를 제시. AI 에이전트·로봇의 확산으로 블록체인 결제 수요가 커질 것이라고도 주장.
다듬은 글
This $2.5 trillion crypto market could be on the verge of transforming into a $300 trillion financial system e complete restructuring of how money moves around the world. Right now, some of the most aggressive predictions we've seen this cycle are not just about price, but about total system takeover.
Tom Lee, a Wall Street veteran known for his macro calls, believes crypto is set to replace traditional finance with five of the top 10 financial institutions becoming crypto native within the next decade. At the same time, Raoul Pal, a former hedge fund manager and macro investor, is making an even bigger claim.
We are entering the largest capital raise in human history where artificial intelligence will absorb trillions in capital and crypto will become the infrastructure that powers it. According to this thesis, the reason crypto still feels weak right now isn't because the opportunity is gone, but because the market is massively underestimating what's coming.
From regulatory catalysts like the Clarity Act to demographic tailwinds to the explosion of AI agents and robotics, everything is aligning at once. In this video, we're going to break down exactly what Tom Lee and Raoul Pal are seeing, how a $300 trillion crypto market could realistically form, and why 2026 could be the moment where everything accelerates faster than anyone expects.
; Keep in mind crypto prices and the amount of assets tokenized are highly linked. So, if a market is going to go to 300 trillion of asset value, uh Ethereum isn't going to stay at 100 and 200 billion dollars of total network value. And that's the reality is that there's a a blockchains today that operate at scale.
Okay? So, what does this mean? Well, I think that means that crypto, which delivers a lot of efficiency, are going to replace a lot of the most profitable banks today. And so, I want to give you some examples. J.P. Morgan is the most profitable bank in the world, and they earn 60 billion. But, there's a company that called Jane Street.
I don't know if there's anybody from Jane Street here, but they earn just in the business of basically moving money around, and they're going to earn 40 billion this year. That's nearly as much money as J.P. Morgan, but they only have 3,000 employees. So, with 1/1000 the number of employees, they're almost as profitable as J.P.
Morgan. Okay? And it shows you just moving money around is more valuable than keeping people's money, and crypto is very good at moving money around. And take a company like Tether. Tether probably going to earn 15 billion this year. It's a crypto-native company, and they have 300 employees. If you combine Tether with Jane Street, you make more money than J.P.
Morgan, and J.P. Morgan is the largest bank in the world. So, you get the picture. Investors always give too much value to the incumbent, and I've highlighted this before. Whether in the auto industry, you might have bet on the horse-buggy makers, or in uh digital media, you would have bet on News Corp and Viacom.
But, as you can see, the new entrant is always the one that captures all the value. And so, I think in the next 10 years, five of the 10 largest financial institutions will be crypto-native companies. Right now, most investors are still valuing crypto like it is a niche asset class. But, according to Tom Lee, that entire framing is already outdated.
What matters is not where crypto is today, but where the the financial system is heading. He points out a simple but powerful idea. The total value of assets that can eventually move on chain is not in the trillions. It is in the hundreds of trillions. Estimates for global financial assets already exceed 300 trillion when you combine equities, bonds, real estate, and derivatives.
If even a fraction of that transitions onto blockchain rails, the current valuations of major networks look incredibly small. And this is already starting to happen. Stablecoins alone are processing volumes that rival traditional payment networks with settlement happening faster and at lower cost. BlackRock and other major institutions are actively pushing tokenization strategies, bringing real-world assets like treasuries and funds onto blockchain infrastructure.
Tom Lee then highlights something most people miss. The most valuable part of finance is not holding money. It is moving money. Firms like Jane Street generate tens of billions by simply facilitating flows. Tether, with a tiny workforce compared to traditional banks, is producing massive profits because it operates on crypto rails.
This is the shift. Efficiency is replacing size, speed is replacing legacy systems, and investors are still pricing old institutions as if they will dominate forever. History shows that never lasts. The new system captures the value. And if that pattern holds, crypto is not competing with finance. It is becoming finance.
But if crypto is about to replace the old system, what actually triggers that shift to accelerate? n a war that ends soon. The second positive catalyst on the macro is the Clarity Act. It's a huge deal. We all know why the Clarity Act matters. I mean, basically it provides a legitimate framework for crypto to proliferate in the US, but also financial institutions to build.
But unfortunately, the the market only believes there's a 56% chance Clarity Act gets signed this year. Now, I've talked to a lot of folks in Washington uh and our including our own policy experts, I it does seem like the odds are much higher. The prediction markets are trying to find equilibrium, but I do think probability of passage is much higher than 56%.
But of course, we know that big banks don't want this to happen. But keep in mind, the big banks uh don't write policy. Uh laws are written to represent people, and that's why we have to keep in mind there are a lot of constituents that want to see the Clarity Act passed. If that passes, it's a big catalyst.
The third positive catalyst uh is of course, don't forget the White House is a very pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto White House. Um it's also very good for the US dollar policy, uh especially with regard to stablecoins. The fourth is we have a new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, and Kevin Warsh uh is is pro-Bitcoin.
And finally, the stock market has a massive tailwind. I know a lot of you guys may be bearish on equities cuz you think they've run too far, but at Fundstrat, uh which is another hat I wear, we've been bullish on stocks uh structurally, and a lot of it has to do with this chart. This chart is the number of people in America aged 30 to 50.
Every time it goes up, the US economy will grow faster than trend. And we are seeing this above trend because of millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. If the long-term shift into crypto is already underway, the next question is simple. What actually pushes this market into acceleration? Tom Lee points to a series of catalysts that are not getting enough attention, yet they are quietly aligning at the same time.
Start with macro conditions. Central banks still want inflation contained, but recent data has started to ease pressure. Energy markets have stabilized compared to prior spikes, and that reduces the need for aggressive tightening. At the same time, growth indicators have shown signs of improvement. Manufacturing activity has started to recover, and risk appetite is slowly returning to global markets.
Then, there is regulation. The Clarity Act has become one of the most important developments for crypto in the United States. While prediction markets have been conservative on its chances, insiders suggest the probability of passage is much higher. If this framework becomes law, it opens the door for institutions to build, allocate, and scale within crypto without regulatory uncertainty holding them back.
Policy direction also matters. The current administration has taken a far more supportive stance toward digital assets, especially when it comes to stablecoins and maintaining dollar dominance. That creates a powerful incentive for adoption rather than restriction. Even at the central bank level, leadership is shifting.
A more open stance toward Bitcoin and digital assets signals that resistance is softening where it matters most. And then, there is demographics. The number of people in their peak earning and investing years continues to rise. This has historically driven stronger economic growth and higher asset prices.
Individually, each of these factors matters. Together, they create something much bigger. They create the conditions for a sustained expansion in crypto adoption. And when multiple tailwinds align like this, markets rarely move slowly for long. But even with all these catalysts, there is still one piece of the story most investors are completely missing.
uh the , but of course you're still going to wonder why crypto uh is so weak. And I think it's because people are forgetting that crypto is the future of money. Okay, the first thing I want to cover is agent and agent agentic and robotics and why crypto will play a role. This is a list of all the milestones since ChatGPT was introduced in 2023.
Okay, and there's been significant advances in the last 3 years. Of course, the first was the launch of ChatGPT. The second, which happened in 2024, was when the agent systems began to develop capabilities to work with websites, interact with websites. Then the third big advancement has been robotics, uh Optimus Prime and their dexterity, and of course the in the Ukraine uh building drones at industrial scale.
And then finally, we're seeing uh superhuman capabilities develop. So, OpenAI developed a uh solved an 80-year-old puzzle, and uh and then Figure AI launched a robot that could actually build uh and operate at scale in a warehouse. Okay. So, that means in the future, robots are already going to dominate most traffic on the internet.
And this is why Marc Andreessen and others have talked about this as being the grand unification because if you've got robot systems, you're going to have to control them. And that's where blockchain is much more effective than traditional rails at controlling uh what robots do. The third layer of this thesis is where things start to move from financial markets into something much larger.
Tom Lee connects the rise of crypto not only to macro and regulation, but to artificial intelligence and robotics becoming dominant economic forces. Since the launch of large language models, the pace of technological change has not slowed down. First came conversational systems that changed how people interact with information, then came agent-based systems that can execute tasks across websites and digital platforms.
Now, the next phase is already visible in robotics where machines are beginning to operate in warehouses, logistics systems, and even military environments. As these systems scale, something important happens. They stop being experimental and start becoming infrastructure. When machines begin transacting, coordinating, and executing tasks at scale, they need a financial layer that is instant, programmable, and global.
This is where Tom Lee's argument becomes critical. Traditional financial systems were not designed for machine speed. Bank settlement times, compliance delays, and intermediary layers become bottlenecks in an AI-driven economy. Blockchain systems, on the other hand, are built for programmable value transfer without central friction.
The implication is not just that crypto benefits from AI growth, it is that AI systems may eventually depend on crypto rails to function efficiently at scale. You can already see early signals of this. Tokenized compute markets, machine-to-machine payments, and experimental autonomous agent economies are starting to emerge in small pockets of the ecosystem.
If this continues, crypto stops being a speculative asset class and becomes a coordination layer for digital intelligence. And once that shift becomes obvious, capital does not move gradually. It moves quickly toward whatever system can support the next phase of growth. But even this technological shift is only half of the bigger picture.
The other half comes from a far more aggressive global force that is already in motion. As , [snorts] nothing , what what there's people borrowing money in this, it'ongou." Cuz ame, ; Yeah. Raoul Pal frames the next phase of the global economy as something far more intense than a normal business cycle.
It is a capital race driven by artificial intelligence where nations and corporations are forced into constant acceleration just to avoid falling behind. At the center of this race is a simple constraint. If one major power achieves a decisive advantage in artificial general intelligence, the balance of global influence shifts permanently.
That creates a game theory problem where no participant can afford to slow down because the cost of losing is too high. This is why investment has become self-reinforcing. Every breakthrough forces competitors to respond with more capital, more compute, and more aggressive deployment. Even in downside scenarios such as failed companies or collapsed projects, the assets do not disappear.
They are immediately absorbed by larger players, concentrating power, and accelerating progress further. What matters here is not just competition, but conversion. Raoul Pal describes this system as a transformation of energy into intelligence. Every dollar of capital, every watt of energy, every hardware cycle is being directed toward building smarter systems.
In this environment, liquidity does not stay idle. It circulates faster and concentrates in sectors tied to intelligence production. That includes computing infrastructure, digital networks, and systems that enable autonomous coordination. Crypto enters this picture as the settlement layer for an increasingly machine-driven economy.
As artificial intelligence systems expand, they require global, neutral, and always-on financial rails that do not depend on traditional banking delays or jurisdictional friction. This drives capital into crypto infrastructure, and crypto infrastructure enables artificial intelligence systems to scale more efficiently.
And once feedback loops like this form, they tend to accelerate rather than stabilize. But even with this global race unfolding, the final piece of the story is what happens when all of these forces converge at the same time. When you put all of these forces together, Tom Lee and Raoul Pal are describing something larger than a normal crypto cycle.
They are describing a structural shift in how the global economy functions. On one side, you have the financial system being rebuilt through tokenization. Trillions of dollars in assets are slowly becoming compatible with blockchain rails, and the most efficient networks are beginning to capture real economic activity rather than just speculative flows.
On another side, regulation is shifting in a direction that reduces friction instead of increasing it. Frameworks like the Clarity Act signal that institutions are no longer being kept at the edge of crypto. They are being invited into it. At the same time, political and monetary conditions are becoming more supportive of digital assets, especially stable coins that reinforce dollar liquidity on a global scale.
Then, there is artificial intelligence. What started as software has now become infrastructure. Agents, robotics, and autonomous systems are beginning to generate economic output and require financial systems that operate at machine speed. Traditional banking systems are too slow for this environment, which naturally pushes demand toward programmable settlement layers.
Finally, there is the capital race itself. Artificial intelligence is absorbing global liquidity at an unprecedented rate. Governments and corporations are locked into a feedback loop where they cannot slow down without risking permanent disadvantage. When these four forces overlap, financial infrastructure does not evolve gradually.
It reorders itself. This is where Tom Lee's and Raoul Pal's views converge. Crypto is no longer just a market narrative. It becomes the settlement layer for a world driven by intelligence, automation, and continuous capital deployment. And in that kind of environment, the difference between early positioning and late recognition is not incremental. It is exponential. .
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