Veteran investor Jordi Visser buys Ether as AI drives tokenization demand

Jordi Visser, a macro investor who spent more than 30 years on Wall Street, disclosed that he recently purchased Ether. His reasoning isn’t the usual DeFi thesis or ETF momentum narrative. It’s something weirder, and potentially more consequential: he thinks artificial intelligence is about to supercharge the demand for tokenized assets, and Ethereum sits at the center of that shift.

Visser laid out the case on Anthony Pompliano’s podcast on May 9, framing digital tokens as the essential resource that AI agents will consume at scale. Not electricity. Not data. Tokens.

“I don’t think enough people are talking about tokenization and what’s happening.”

His prediction is straightforward: tokenization and AI are becoming deeply intertwined in 2026, and most market participants haven’t priced that in yet.

The AI-token thesis, explained

When Visser says AI agents need “food” and that food is tokens, he’s making a structural argument about how autonomous software will transact. If AI agents are going to buy, sell, negotiate, and settle transactions without human intervention, they need a native medium of exchange that’s programmable and operates 24/7. Traditional banking rails don’t cut it. Tokenized assets on a blockchain do.

Visser sees this creating a feedback loop. As more real-world assets get tokenized, more AI agents can interact with them. As more AI agents interact with them, demand for the underlying infrastructure, primarily Ethereum’s smart contract layer, rises.

The former hedge fund manager argues this dynamic could also reshape inflation. Programmable asset flows, he suggests, could introduce efficiencies that traditional financial plumbing simply can’t match. Instead of settlement delays, counterparty risk, and manual reconciliation, you get instant, verifiable transfers.

Institutional momentum is building

RedStone recently launched a settlement layer designed to unlock $30 billion in tokenized assets for use as DeFi collateral. That’s live infrastructure aimed at bridging traditional finance assets into decentralized protocols where they can actually be put to work.

Then there’s BlackRock. The world’s largest asset manager pushed forward with its tokenization strategy in early May 2026, unveiling new on-chain fund offerings.

Estimates suggest AI could drive $10 billion in on-chain transactions by the end of 2026. That figure would represent a meaningful jump in blockchain-native economic activity driven by utility demand rather than speculation.

What this means for investors

Visser’s Ether purchase reframes how to think about Ethereum’s value proposition. The AI-tokenization angle positions ETH not as a speculative asset but as infrastructure for autonomous agents that don’t exist yet at scale but are coming fast.

Some analysts have drawn parallels to Bitcoin’s gradual absorption into institutional portfolios, suggesting Ether could follow a similar trajectory as tokenization gains mainstream adoption. The argument is that portfolio allocations above 1% become justified once an asset demonstrates clear utility beyond price appreciation. Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities give it a structural advantage in this specific race.

Visser and others have also flagged that if AI-driven tokenization concentrates wealth among those with early access to these tools and assets, it could widen existing divides in crypto markets. The promise of programmable finance is efficiency and inclusion. The risk is that it delivers the first without the second.

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