A weakening US dollar could give crypto the “green light” and help extend the industry’s rally, says Real Vision founder Raoul Pal.
He tells Cointelegraph on the latest episode of Trade Secrets that higher bond yields and the strong dollar are keeping liquidity from flowing freely.
“If they can engineer the dollar lower, then we get a green light for further movement in crypto,” he says. “I don’t want to get overly excited, so I haven’t got a full green light on everything.”
However he believes Bitcoin will miss out of much of the crypto economic activity generated by AI agents, which is likely to flow to smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana.
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Pal is among the most experienced high profile crypto analysts, having worked in hedge fund sales at Goldman Sachs in Europe and co-managed a global macro fund at GLG Partners. He launched the research platform Global Macro Investor in 2005 and co-founded financial media Real Vision in 2014.
Pal says he first bought Bitcoin in 2013, after applying a gold-based valuation framework to the cryptocurrency.
An AI pause could help crypto catch up
Bitcoin’s cycle recovery arguably came between Aug. 19 and Aug. 25 when BTC rose about 25% to $80,000. Interestingly, over that period, AI bellwether stock Nvidia notched up seven consecutive losing sessions.
Pal says pauses in the AI trade have allowed capital to rotate into crypto.
“You can tell there’s this sort of rotation for liquidity that’s around right now, which means it’s not abundant yet,” he says.
While AI has been competing with crypto for funds, an AI crash would be an unwelcome prospect, as a bursting bubble would indicate that liquidity is being “sucked out of the system,” while threatening the conditions crypto needs to rise.
“Things don’t go bust if liquidity is plentiful,” Pal says.
His preferred outcome would be a weaker dollar, a steeper yield curve and banks expanding the money supply through increased lending.
However, borrowing costs have been moving higher. The US 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.29% in September, while the Fed raised its benchmark rate by a quarter-point.
If those conditions don’t materialize, Pal’s “second best scenario” is for AI stocks to trade sideways, which would allow capital to rotate into crypto.
AI agents could bring more business to Ethereum and Solana
AI agents can now pay to access web content using stablecoins through a feature that Amazon Web Services introduced in June. Coinbase handles payment verification and settlement through its x402 protocol, with USDC on Base among the supported payment options.
Pal says agents could eventually raise the money they need to operate, by issuing tokens to fund projects that could last “a week, a month, a year,” then carrying out the work and generating returns.
He says Ethereum and Solana could attract more activity as software uses their smart contracts to transact.
“My guess is they’ll get more adoption over time as AI uses them,” he says.
Related: Coinbase’s AI payments protocol x402 launches app store for AI agents
Solana needs more than activity to overtake Ethereum
Ethereum’s greater concentration of capital makes Pal cautious about claims Solana will overtake it in market value, despite his enthusiasm for both networks.
Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani predicted on Trade Secrets last month that SOL would surpass Ether’s market capitalization “this market cycle.”
Samani “needs to hold his horses a little bit,” Pal says, even though he acknowledged that it is possible.
The networks are ahead of each other on different metrics. Solana recorded around 3.2 million active addresses over the preceding 24 hours on Monday, compared with Ethereum’s 387,000, according to DefiLlama. But Ethereum has about $54.4 billion in decentralized finance protocols, which is far ahead of Solana’s $6.7 billion.
Pal compares the networks using what he calls “economic density,” dividing total value locked by active users. He says Ethereum attracts more capital relative to its user count, and Solana’s activity involves smaller amounts.
“Solana’s core activity is speculation,” he says. “It’s just smaller clip sizes.”
Pal says he has stopped giving public price targets because his forecasts get clipped and recirculated online. He describes million-dollar Bitcoin by 2030 as a “meme” reflecting growing adoption, ETF interest and Bitcoin’s use as collateral.
“Does it make a million bucks? I don’t know, but certainly by 2032, yeah, I don’t have an issue with that.”
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