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‘AI Is Never Going To Be Dumber Than It Is Now’: Crypto Veteran Sees Bitcoin As Future AI Collateral
In the near term, Bill Barhydt sees Bitcoin retesting $85,000, unwinding leverage back to the low $70,000s.
Anushka Basu·Stocktwits
Published Aug 23, 2026 | 11:32 AM EDT
- Abra CEO Bill Barhydt said on Sunday that AI capability only compounds forward, and that crypto would be “dragged along as the orchestration layer” for AI at global scale.
- He argued Bitcoin’s most important role is as collateral rather than as an investment, and should eventually displace Treasury bonds.
- He credited Treasury policy rather than sentiment for the recent move, citing Bessent’s yield-curve flattening via short-dated funding of long-end buybacks, with the dollar index down about 2% as his liquidity proxy.
Abra CEO Bill Barhydt said that artificial intelligence (AI) capability only compounds forward, and that crypto would end up as a coordination layer under it, arguing Bitcoin’s (BTC) most important role was as collateral rather than as an investment
“AI is never going to be dumber than it is now,” Barhydt said on the Wolf of All Streets podcast on Sunday, adding that models got smarter every six months and that real artificial superintelligence would arrive once systems begin solving real-world problems, which he foresaw in the next 4 years. “And I think crypto gets dragged along as the orchestration layer for how to make this work at global scale,” he added.
Bitcoin As Pristine Collateral
Barhydt said that the premise that AI agents would transact in stablecoins held only when humans were making the decisions. Once Bitcoin became genuinely trust-chain fungible, he said, agents would prefer an asset that would not lose value to monetary debasement.
He argued that Bitcoin should eventually displace Treasury bonds as the market’s pristine collateral and said using Bitcoin as collateral was finally becoming a solved problem. BTC’s price was down roughly 1% on Sunday, trading at the $76,580.59 level. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed at ‘extremely high’ levels over the past day.
Price Path And Cycle View
In the new term future, he said it makes sense for Bitcoin to reset to $85,000 from current levels, unwind leverage back to the low $70,000, and then begin a “methodical march” to $100,000. He said that pullback could land at the bottom of what the four-year cycle would predict.
Barhydt attributed the recent move to Treasury policy rather than sentiment, saying Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was working to flatten the yield curve by funding long-end buybacks with short-term debt at the expense of the dollar. He cited the dollar index down about 2% over the previous fortnight as his liquidity proxy.
Visser On AI Guardrails
Barhydt wasn’t alone in linking the two sectors. Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser had discussed that AI was creating “a new population of autonomous economic actors,” He argued that crypto was building the infrastructure of actors that would need to transact, establish ownership, and verify identity.
Abra’s Pending Nasdaq Listing
Abra agreed in March to go public through a merger with New Providence Acquisition Corp. III, a deal valuing the firm at $750 million pre-money, with the combined company to be renamed Abra Financial Inc. and listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ‘ABRX.’
Read also:Arthur Hayes Calls Ethereum Foundation ‘A Bunch Of Jokers’ In A Blunt Take But Is Bullish On ETH
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Source: stocktwits.com