Recently, I came across some viewpoints from Dragonfly partner Haseeb on a podcast, which I found quite interesting. He straightforwardly pointed out a phenomenon: retail investors are really gone.

Since October last year, exchange activity has plummeted, and indicators like search volume and app downloads that measure retail interest have been crashing. Why are retail investors leaving? Simply put, they lost money. During market crashes, those forced to liquidate and holding altcoins with huge losses are mainly retail investors. And what about institutions? They are now the last buyers in the market; the funds used to buy Bitcoin via ETFs haven't significantly withdrawn due to the market downturn. So you see, this cycle didn't crash 70-80% like previous cycles; institutions are supporting the bottom.

But this raises a question: where did retail investors go? They shifted to assets with higher volatility like gold, AI stocks, and oil. Cryptocurrency volatility has actually decreased now, making it much less attractive to retail investors. Haseeb believes that to re-attract retail investors, cryptocurrencies need to start rising again first, and secondly, they need enough volatility. He even predicts that before next year, crypto volatility will struggle to surpass that of the US stock market.

Regarding the narrative around Bitcoin, he has an interesting perspective: people have actually overestimated the "story" Bitcoin needs. Bitcoin doesn't require fancy narratives; it's digital gold, and it will always exist. As the baby boomer generation gradually exits, Generation X and Millennials will naturally accept Bitcoin as part of their financial assets. He thinks quantum risk is like the Y2K crisis—scary-looking but completely manageable. As long as the community reaches consensus and pushes the migration forward, it could even turn into a positive.

For altcoins, Haseeb straightforwardly states: the core of cryptocurrency is money and finance. Stories about supply chains, metaverse, gaming, and social media are mainly VC self-indulgent narratives. Projects like Axie Infinity and Yuga Labs have failed, proving that the real product-market fit for crypto lies in finance. So, for retail investors to return, altcoins need new financial narratives.

The most interesting part is his view on AI agents. He says the current UX of crypto is terrible—12-word private keys, 15 decimal places, incomprehensible smart contracts—these are bad experiences designed for humans. But for AI, they are perfect. AI agents can instantly parse smart contracts, monitor risks, and respond to hacker attacks in seconds. Once AI matures enough, cryptocurrencies will become as secure as traditional finance. At that point, many low-risk-averse ordinary people will enter; they’re not here to gamble but to save and passively invest. Haseeb believes this will be the real explosion—when AI makes crypto safe, ordinary people will flood into on-chain index investing, and the entire ecosystem will be fundamentally transformed.

Overall, he thinks the future of crypto isn’t about attracting more retail traders, but about AI agents enabling ordinary people to participate in on-chain finance with confidence. Institutional support is just a transition; the real wave has yet to come.