Everyone Thinks Crypto Is Over. Here's Why They're Wrong.

This summer, Wall Street strategist Tom Lee made headlines when he suggested that many investors were "rage quitting" crypto. These investors are tired of seeing AI and tech stocks soar in value while crypto assets continue to plummet.

At the time, billionaire Mark Cuban had just announced that he was selling nearly all his Bitcoin, and it looked like other top investors would soon join him. After all, Bitcoin is down 50% from its highs and ranks among the world's worst-performing assets right now.

But maybe it's still too early to throw in the towel on crypto. If you're thinking about trimming your crypto allocation all the way to zero, you might want to rethink that decision.

New ways to trade crypto

Prediction markets have emerged as one of the most popular new ways to trade crypto. Prediction market contracts offer investors a way to express simple "yes/no" opinions about the prices of specific cryptocurrencies or the probabilities of certain crypto-related events.

Image source: Getty Images.

Investors can easily find prediction market contracts for the largest market-cap cryptocurrencies, with the most popular involving specific price points. When Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) and Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN) reported Q2 earnings, both saw huge spikes from prediction market revenue. In fact, Robinhood reported higher revenue from prediction market trading than from spot crypto trading.

This is a potential sign of things to come. Coinbase is diversifying away from being just a crypto exchange, planning to offer trading in just about any digital asset imaginable, including tokenized assets and financial derivatives. So it's a bit short-sighted to look only at spot crypto trading volume, see that it has dried up this year, and conclude that crypto is over.

Pockets of growth in the crypto market

Moreover, some areas of the crypto market are actually soaring in value. One of these is the stablecoin sector; two of the top five cryptocurrencies are stablecoins. Together, Tether (CRYPTO: USDT) and USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) have a combined market cap of $250 billion.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, stablecoins could grow exponentially between now and 2030. He sees the stablecoin industry ballooning into a $3 trillion market opportunity. That opens up huge new opportunities for stablecoin issuers. That helps to explain why a consortium of 140 financial, tech, and crypto companies in June announced the launch of a new stablecoin called Open USD.

And it's not just stablecoins growing rapidly. So are real-world assets (RWAs), which are tradeable cryptos representing ownership of things like stocks, bonds, and real estate. According to the latest research from CoinShares, RWA deposits tripled year over year, reaching $7.4 billion in Q2 2026. Looking ahead, some major consulting firms have suggested that RWA tokenization could become a trillion-dollar opportunity by 2030.

The merger of AI and crypto

Finally, there is the rapidly growing interaction of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology. This is something that Cathie Wood of Ark Invest first pointed out in 2024, in her firm's annual Big Ideas report. As she sees it, the intersection of AI and public blockchains will drive enormous value.

The merger of AI and crypto will take some time to develop, of course. But the broad contours are already starting to appear. For example, Coinbase Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong has already embraced the era of agentic AI finance. As he sees it, AI agents will soon trade among themselves on the blockchain, most likely using dollar-pegged stablecoins to make transactions.

Several other retail crypto trading platforms have also embraced AI agents. On Robinhood right now, for example, you can import your own AI agent and put it to work. So this could be a long-term trend with staying power, provided the hype and buzz around AI stay at a crescendo level.

Will money ever flow back into crypto?

But even if the hype around AI fades, so what? Arguably, that could be the best thing ever to happen to crypto. All the investors who "rage quit" crypto might soon be "rage quitting" AI, which would likely lead to new money flowing back into the crypto sector.

There is plenty of growth happening right now in crypto; you just need to know where to look. Crypto has always been highly cyclical, and this is what it always feels like when crypto is in the bear phase of its cycle. For long-term investors willing to keep the faith, there could be some very profitable investment opportunities ahead.

Dominic Basulto has positions in Bitcoin and USDC. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool recommends Coinbase Global. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.