저자: TomLee&RaoulPal · 외국인
요약 보기
Lee는 2026년 크립토 펀더멘털 개선(토큰화, AI 에이전트 수요)을 근거로 조정 후 상승 시작을 주장하고, 연내 성장 잠재력을 긍정한다. Pal은 자율 AI 경제 에이전트가 지갑을 쓰며 크립토 TAM이 사실상 무한해질 수 있다고 주장한다. 두 사람 모두 시장 저점 이후 진입을 강조한다.
다듬은 글
The crypto market may be entering one of the biggest transformations in its history. And this time, the catalyst may not be humans. In fact, it could be artificial intelligence. Tom Lee and Raoul Pal are making increasingly optimistic predictions about where AI and cryptocurrencies are headed in 2026.
Lee says crypto diving deeper into tokenization, and AI agents are starting to make . Meanwhile, Raul Pal sees something potentially even bigger. He argues that economic AI agents scale everywhere and can eventually become independent economic entities, creating businesses, generating profits, and using their own wallets.
His conclusion is radical . The crypto market can have an infinite TAM, or total addressable market, as each of these agents can become part of the crypto economy. And if that happens, the opportunities could go far beyond today's crypto market. In this video, we break down Tom Lee and Raoul Pal's latest predictions for 2026, why they believe AI agents could massively expand the overall addressable cryptocurrency market, and why both believe we could be in for a much bigger movemenom, I thought it would be appropriate to start with the events of last week.
The largest short liquidation in crypto history, market cap added $500 billion in a matter of days. What is your reaction to this market movement we have seen and Ethereum rising from around $1,900 to almost $2,600, surpassing Bitcoin? I think everyone has their own perspective on this, but our position this year is that crypto fundamentals are strengthening, which is a real contrast to past crypto winters that were marked by closures, lack of capital, and diminishing use cases.
We know that tokenization is gaining a lot of popularity . I mean, so many well-known large financial institutions are creating tokenized products, especially based on Ethereum. Furthermore, we know that as AI capabilities develop, it becomes very obvious that AI agents do not want to use traditional financial systems, so crypto infrastructure makes a lot of sense.
So, for us, last week was what I would call a correction , as price is finally starting to realize that we don't have to be in deep crypto winter. And as you noted, the fact that there was a mass liquidation shows how disoriented the market was. And, as the famous John Russell says, any growth begins with covering short positions.
So, in our opinion, this is the beginning of a much larger movement. The latest rally in the crypto market may signal something much more than a short-term bounce. Tom Lee argues that the market is finally starting to recognize how dramatically the fundamentals of cryptocurrencies have improved in 2026 .
Instead of the closures, capital reductions, and disappearing use cases that defined previous crypto winters, large financial institutions are moving toward tokenization, while artificial intelligence is creating a whole new reason to us cryptocurrencies with leverage and get bigger payouts tons of VIP bonuses like minimal is thesis is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
In June, major financial institutions announced plans to support on-chain payments with tokenized commercial bank money. While Swift said that 17 banks across six continents are preparing to pilot tokenized deposits for cross-border payments. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation also processed real-world industrial transactions using tokenized securities in July.
Then there is artificial intelligence. Ethereum's own ecosystem documentation now describes agents that use stablecoins, manage wallets, pay for data and computation, and conduct commerce between agents. A regulated Swiss bank even tested live digital asset transactions managed by an artificial intelligence agent.
So when Lee calls the latest move a price correction and says it could be the start of a much larger move, he is effectively pointing to a market whose underlying use cases are expanding while prices are just starting to catch up. And that could make this rally much more important than the short squeeze that started it.
The bigger question now is whether investors are witnessing the start of a new crypto cycle, rather than another temporary rally. This is where Lee's next argument becomes even more aggressive. There has been a lot of discussion about whether we will see some kind of correction or pullback in Ethereum, Bitcoin, and the crypto market in general after this huge short squeeze.
Do you expect this to happen, or do you think this has started another "bull" market in cryptocurrency in general ? You know, I think for those who don't have assets right now, there's obviously a tactical question. And my answer to anyone who doesn't have cryptocurrency right now or doesn't have enough: looking at past crypto cycles, would you buy cryptocurrency 4 weeks before or a week after the low?
The answer is obvious: everyone should buy 4 weeks before the minimum or a week after it. So, if the low was last week, you buy a week after it, and 4 weeks before the low. I think that in any case think if someone tries to guess the bottom and do what I call “buy the middle of the we have been publishing statistics that have worked for over a decade: cryptocurrency makes all of its moves in 10 days.
And if you miss those 10 best days, you will have a negative return. So how many such wonderful days were there in 2026? Somewhere alone. So I believe that cryptocurrencies have great growth potential until the end of the year. Tom Lee's next argument is even more important for those trying to prepare for the next big movement.
After the massive short squeeze, the obvious question is whether Bitcoin and Ethereum will bounce back. Lee acknowledges that a pullback is possible, but his main argument is that waiting for the perfect confirmation can be much more expensive than dealing with volatility. His reasoning is based on the historical concentration of cryptocurrency returns.
Lee argues that historically the market has made a huge chunk of its profits during a small number of very strong trading days. This means that an investor who stays on the sidelines waiting for the perfect moment to enter may miss relatively short periods when the market is accelerating. This idea becomes even more important with the expansion of approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, and spot Ethereum ETFs followed later that year, creating regulated channels for traditional investors to access.
These products have changed the structure of the market, making cryptocurrency more accessible through the usual investment infrastructure. Lee's conclusion is therefore much more optimistic than simply expecting a rebound. He believes that investors who try to buy only when the market has already proven its strength may end up buying at a much higher price.
His message is that an opportunity could be forming now, while the market is still digesting the change in fundamentals. And if the next big move comes sooner than expected, waiting for certainty could lead to missing the most important moment. This brings us to the other part of Lee's thesis, where artificial intelligence could fundamentally change how money itself moves.
profitabl advice, ere is such a thing as the "uncanny valley ." So, there's a famous Japanese roboticist who wrote about the idea that if robots start to look too human, people feel very uncomfortable. And that's actually true. I think we will feel very uncomfortable the day we see androids walking around and we can't tell them apart from humans.
Well, the same thing will happen to the financial system and your money, because agent systems are gaining many capabilities . In fact, we already know that within many of these models, agents buy more tokens than humans. So, we know that agent activity is increasing. Well, a similar "scary moment" will come regarding your money.
Because once AI systems become part of our economy, they will become revenue-generating units, perhaps even taxable units, and they can be delegated and operate under our authority. But what's to stop them from deciding to act independently and make their own financial decisions, including how they access your accounts and perform transactions that you may have already authorized?
For me, this will be the “uncanny valley of wealth”: over time, it is entirely possible that most of our personal wealth will be created by our delegated agents. Will we trust them if they operate on Visa networks and JP Morgan accounts to be sure they won't drain our financial resources? I think that's why we want to have cryptocurrency, smart contracts, finality, and instant payments— the things that are the essence of crypto, to protect us from agent systems getting out of control.
Tom Lee's third argument takes the cryptocurrency thesis into territory that sounds futuristic, but parts of it are already starting to appear in the real economy. He describes the approaching " uncanny valley" of wealth, where AI agents will eventually be able to generate profits, control financial resources, and conduct transactions with minimal human involvement.
This creates a problem that traditional financial infrastructure was not necessarily designed to handle. Bank accounts and payment systems were built around people making decisions, while autonomous software can run continuously, respond instantly, and potentially interact with other software. Lee believes this is where cryptocurrency becomes particularly important, as smart contracts can set rules about what an agent is allowed to do.
There is already evidence that this market is moving beyond theory. The Ethereum documentation for 2026 describes agents that control on-chain wallets, pay for data and computation, and conduct transactions with other agents. MetaMask also introduced an agent wallet designed specifically to give artificial intelligence systems controlled access to on-chain transactions.
Lee's point is not that every AI agent will suddenly take control of humanity's wealth. The larger possibility is that cryptocurrency could become the infrastructure that allows these systems to transact while remaining controllable and verifiable. This could transform AI from simply a technology that uses crypto to one of the forces driving demand for crypto infrastructure itself .
And this leads directly to Raoul Pal's much larger prediction about what will happen when billions of economic agents enter the market. Literally everything has changed. Because during that period, since that period in October, um, last year, we have given birth to economic agents. And they scale everywhere.
Everyone builds them. So what we have is... it suddenly occurred to me that everyone is saying, "Yeah, the agents are going to use your wallets and stuff." But then when you analyze it through what I was talking about, the speed at which it happens. This means that the cryptocurrency has an infinite TAM.
The general addressable market is all of these agents. And they will be economic entities in their own right , building their own businesses, etc. So, that changed everything. Raul Pal's argument takes the thesis about AI and cryptocurrency to a new level. He says the biggest change isn't just that artificial intelligence will use cryptocurrency.
And in the fact that economic agents themselves can become participants in the economy. Instead of millions or billions of human users constituting the threshold of adoption, Pal sees a future where software agents will be able to run businesses, manage resources, generate revenue, and execute transactions independently.
This idea becomes increasingly relevant in 2026. Coinbase Institutional wrote in March that standalone software may require wallets, payment systems, and settlement infrastructure for transactions at scale. The study specifically states that stablecoins, settlement levels, and wallet infrastructure can benefit from regular machine activity.
Visa also said that AI agents are already starting to make payments, including booking travel, ordering goods, accessing data and purchasing computing resources. This is important because it takes Pal's thesis from pure speculation to real financial application. Pal's argument about an infinite total market volume does not mean that the cryptocurrency itself suddenly becomes infinitely valuable.
His point is that the potential number of economic agents is not limited to the human population. If autonomous software becomes widespread in business and operates continuously over time, the number of potential economic entities could increase significantly. This creates a completely different demand curve for wallets, payments, settlements, and programmable financial infrastructure.
And Pal believes this is just the beginning. If billions of agents eventually become economic entities, the next question is how big the cryptoeconomy can become. Compare Tom Lee's argument with Raoul Pal's, and the big picture becomes hard to ignore. Lee sees AI directing more activity towards programmable financial systems, while Pal sees autonomous agents becoming independent economic entities.
Together, these ideas point to a potential expansion of the crypto market that goes far beyond the buying and selling of digital assets by individuals. If agents start making transactions continuously, crypto infrastructure could gain a new class of users who are awake, don’t need a traditional bank account, and can make micropayments at machine speed.
Pal calls this the infinite total market volume. The exact size is impossible to determine, but the direction is becoming clearer. The crypto market could transition from a people-centric asset class to a financial infrastructure built for both people and machines . And if that happens, the growth potential could extend far beyond the current cycle.
Anyway, guys, that's all for today. Thank you for watching. See you in the next video, and, as always, all the best.
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