저자: CathieWood&RaoulPal · 외국인
요약 보기
Cathie Wood는 비트코인을 글로벌 통화 계층, 이더리움·DeFi를 금융 인프라로 보며 기관 채택과 토큰화·스테이블코인이 전통금융과 연결되는 구조적 전환을 강조. Raoul Pal은 유동성 사이클로 2025년 하반기 하락을 설명하고, AI 에이전트의 경제 참여로 크립토 TAM이 무한대로 확장된다고 주장. 두 사람 모두 현재 변동성은 장기 확장 전 과도기라는 입장.
다듬은 글
Cathie Wood sees Bitcoin, Ethereum, and tokenization taking over the entire global financial system like never before. She's been in Bitcoin since 2015, back when it was widely dismissed and treated as a joke by most of the market. Now, she's pointing to something much bigger than just price action.
Bitcoin is being positioned as the base layer of global money, while Ethereum and DeFi are becoming the infrastructure for financial services that don't rely on traditional intermediaries. What's changed most is not the technology, but who is paying attention. Institutions that once ignored or criticized crypto are now building around it.
The same system that used to reject it is now slowly integrating it through tokenization and stablecoins, which are becoming the bridge between traditional finance and on-chain markets. And while Cathie Wood is focused on the structural shift, Raoul Pal is zooming out even further. He argues that crypto is moving into a phase where its total addressable market expands dramatically because of AI agents and machine-driven economic activity entering the system.
Put together, both views point to the same idea. This is no longer a niche market. It's becoming took our first position in 2015, and we we were really we were made fun of back then. I bet. Uh you may or may not have been around and in the industry at that time, but you know, many people thought this was just a a marketing gimmick.
And that's when I really knew that wait a minute, we might be on to something big here. When that many people make fun of you or just dismiss, it's a lot of it was dismissive. Um that makes [clears throat] me even more interested in a in a technology. And so, we have a global monetary system that really is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin owns that space. DeFi, so so Ethereum, Solana, I think they they are running with that space. Hyperliquid giving them a bit of a challenge as well. The institutional interest, I think we needed Larry Fink actually to change his mind because he was saying he was the leader of the pack almost and it was interesting that that the leader of the largest asset management firm in the world was making it his business to dismiss Bitcoin, but his conversion was so extreme.
And and his conversion had to do with a vision and and imagining the tokenization of everything. Cathie Wood begins by looking back at 2015 when Bitcoin was still treated as a fringe idea rather than a financial innovation. At that time, the dominant view across markets was simple. It had no real use case, no institutional future, and no path to global relevance.
Most investors ignored it completely and many actively dismissed it as a temporary experiment that would fade away. What stands out in her reflection is how strong that rejection actually was. The more something is dismissed without serious debate, the more it often signals that the market is early rather than correct.
That kind of environment tends to appear before major technological adoption cycles where early believers accumulate while the broader market stays focused on skepticism. She She that entering Bitcoin during that period was not about hype or momentum. It was about recognizing a shift in financial infrastructure before it became visible to the mainstream.
Over time, that early positioning evolved into a broader thesis. Bitcoin is now being viewed as a global monetary layer rather than a speculative asset, while Ethereum and decentralized finance are forming the backbone of programmable financial systems. Institutional behavior has also changed significantly since then.
Instead of ignoring crypto entirely, large capital allocators are now engaging through regulated products such as ETEFFs, bringing long-term exposure into portfolios. This shift reflects a slow but steady transition from rejection to integration. As that transition continues, the focus is no longer on whether crypto survives, it is on how deeply it becomes embedded into the structure of global finance moving forward.
We are now moving from early disbelief into early adoption, and that shift usually marks the beginning of the most powerful expansion phases in any market cycle. BlackRock uh has something called Aladdin, which is a uh a technology platform for asset managers. Well, if he's saying it's important, then I better learn something about it.
Uh and and so now, yes, and I also think uh critical critical critical to uh DeFi was the evolution of uh stablecoins. Um we just did a podcast with uh the founder of Binance, CZ, yesterday. Uh and both of us agree that the biggest surprise to us from the early days of Bitcoin uh to now was uh the evolution of stablecoins backed by fiat.
Uh that also was quite anathema to uh sort of the the crypto ecosystem in its early days, but now you see the Bitcoin OGs fully supportive. I mean, uh Giancarlo and Paolo at uh Tether, hugely supportive, obviously, of stablecoins, but they were from a from an OG point of view, one of the first two. And so, I think they've brought the world along into this concept of stablecoins, which is the bridge from DeFi in I mean, from TradFi into DeFi.
A major part of the shift described comes from how institutional perceptions started to change once the largest players in traditional finance began acknowledging blockchain infrastructure instead of ignoring it. One of the key turning points is the moment large asset managers began seriously studying tokenization and digital asset settlement systems.
That shift signaled that crypto was no longer being viewed as a side experiment, but as potential market infrastructure. Cathie Wood highlights this change as a validation point. When institutions that once dismissed Bitcoin begin building frameworks around it, the narrative flips from rejection to integration.
It is no longer about whether crypto will survive, but how deeply it will be embedded into global finance. A key driver of this transition is stablecoins. What was once controversial inside early crypto communities has now become one of the most important entry points for institutional capital. Stablecoins allow traditional money to move into digital markets without friction, creating a bridge between banking systems and decentralized finance.
This bridge effect has changed how liquidity enters the ecosystem. Instead of direct speculative inflows, capital now flows through structured rails that support payments, settlement, and trading activity across blockchain networks. That has made decentralized systems more usable for large institutions that require stability and predictability.
Cathie Wood frames this as part of a broader evolution where Bitcoin becomes the monetary layer, Ethereum becomes the infrastructure layer, and tokenization connects everything back to real-world assets. As that structure continues forming, the market is no longer debating adoption, it is watching integration happen in real tim; The US withdrew liquidity for the government shutdown.
That lags crypto by 3 months. It hit crypto, that was 10 10 was in the middle of all of that. Liquidity's picking up again, crypto's picking up again, but there's a gap because Nasdaq, because of this massive need for capital and investment in the space, it just sucked in capital. The Chinese for a period of time bought a lot of gold in that gold rally.
So, what happened was the riskiest of assets, the furthest duration assets, which is SAS companies and crypto, produced identical charts, and they just got left behind for a bit. But, what's happened is literally everything's changed because in that period, from that period of October um last year, we birthed economic agents.
And they're scaling everywhere. Everybody's building them. So, what you've got is it it dawned on me suddenly is like everyone's like, "Yeah, agents are going to use your wallets and blah blah blah." But, then when you play it through from what I've been talking about, the speed of which this is happening, this means crypto has an infinite TAM.
The total addressable market is all of the agents. And they will be economic actors in their own right, building their own businesses, stuff like that. So, it's changed everything. So, when you were saying crypto is going to like a hundred trillion dollars or maybe half of that if we miss, this was based on humans.
Yeah. Yeah, it was. Now, it's still Metcalfe's law, it still follows the log trend, and that would take us still there. You might get there a bit earlier. But, what it kind of means is it just keeps going cuz A, the debasement of currency won't stop until debt to GDP collapses. We're not there yet. GDP growth is not fast enough.
We need to get through the economic singularity. Then, we see, you know, the global coordination rails of of uh blockchain being used for more and more things. Don't forget, the entire financial system is going onto these rails. And you get to front run it. They've announced what they're going to do.
And I've always said this, we've been able to front run the institutions all the way through. And people get exasperated with crypto cuz it went down for And you're like, look at the [ __ ] picture. You've got an infinite TAM, the entire financial system going on these rails, the Clarity Act being passed, the government will not stop debasing the currency.
So, it just keeps going. A major part of the shift now being discussed is how liquidity cycles are interacting with technology cycles in a way that has not really happened before. The view is that crypto does not move in isolation, but responds to global capital conditions, especially when liquidity tightens and then rotates back into risk assets.
Raoul Pal emphasizes that recent pressure across markets was not random. It followed a liquidity squeeze that impacted high-growth technology, software companies, and crypto at the same time. These are all long-duration assets, meaning they depend heavily on future expectations of growth and capital availability.
When liquidity is pulled out of the system, these assets tend to react first and most aggressively. But the more important part of his argument is what has changed underneath this cycle. He points to the rise of artificial intelligence systems and the rapid development of what he calls economic agents.
These are software-based entities capable of interacting with systems, executing tasks, and potentially participating in financial activity over time. The implication is that crypto is no longer just scaling with human adoption. It is beginning to scale with machine participation. If AI agents eventually operate wallets, execute transactions, and interact with decentralized systems, then the total addressable market for crypto expands far beyond traditional user-based assumptions.
This is where the narrative shifts from linear growth to structural expansion. Instead of thinking about crypto as a market of users, it becomes a market of participants that could include both humans and autonomous systems operating continuously across global network. Cathie Wood's institutional framework and Raoul Pal's AI-driven expansion thesis begin to intersect here.
One focuses on financial infrastructure being rebuilt on blockchain rails, while the other focuses on who or what will actually use that infrastructure in the future. Together, they point toward a system that is still early in adoption, but already expanding in ways that traditional financial models have not fully accounted for.
So, for you, Bitcoin going from foris is to Ethereum, happens to all went down . more already biased. Wha, something like January to July? And then it was back at eah, it only went down the ; Even after multiple cycles, strong rallies, and increasing institutional participation, the core argument early in its structural development.
Price action alone does not reflect the full depth of what is being built underneath. One of the key ideas is that crypto corrections should not automatically be interpreted as bearish trend reversals. Instead, they often reflect liquidity cycles within a broader uptrend. Bitcoin drawing down from previous highs or Ethereum experiencing sharp volatility is not new behavior.
It has happened across every cycle, including periods where the market later recovered to new highs once liquidity conditions improved. This is where the distinction between short-term volatility and long-term structure becomes important. The view is that crypto is still transitioning from speculative-driven pricing to infrastructure driven valuation.
That transition does not happen in a straight line. It happens in waves often marked by sharp drawdowns followed by stronger recoveries. Institutional adoption also supports this framing. Even during periods of price weakness, regulated products such as ETFs continue to show that larger capital allocators are building exposure gradually rather than reacting emotionally to market swings.
That type of accumulation behavior tends to appear early in long duration trends rather than late cycle tops. At the same time, macro conditions still play a central role. Liquidity shifts, interest rate expectations, and global capital flows continue to influence how risk assets behave. But the key difference now is that crypto is no longer purely driven by retail speculation.
It is increasingly tied to institutional frameworks and long-term allocation strategies. When both structural adoption and new technology cycles are still developing, markets often appear unstable even while the underlying trend is strengthening. That is the tension defining the current phase where volatility masks long-term expansion rather than ending it.
When you combine both perspectives, the conclusion is not just that crypto is growing, but that the entire structure of global finance is slowly being rebuilt around it. Bitcoin is increasingly being treated as a form of digital monetary reserve. Ethereum is evolving into the infrastructure layer for programmable finance, and tokenization is turning real-world assets into on-chain instruments that can move across borders without traditional friction.
At the same time, the role of institutions has shifted from dismissal to participation. Large asset managers longer debating whether crypto has value. They are building products, allocating capital, and integrating blockchain systems into existing financial framework. That shift alone changes the long-term trajectory of the entire market because institutional capital does not rotate quickly.
It builds slowly and compounds over time. Raoul Pal adds another layer to this structure by introducing the idea that the next phase of growth is not limited to human adoption. As artificial intelligence systems and autonomous agents begin to scale, they introduce a new category of market participant.
These systems could eventually interact with blockchain networks, execute transactions, and participate in economic activity without human intervention. That expands the total addressable market beyond traditional assumptions. What both views agree on is that this is still early in the structural cycle.
Not early in price action, but early in adoption relative to where the system is heading. The volatility seen in recent years does not contradict the thesis. It is part of the transition from speculative markets to infrastructure-based markets. And in that transition, the market often looks unstable right before it expands the fastest. .
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