Pal: Capital Rotating From AI Into Crypto, Skipping Bitcoin — SkimNews
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- Raoul Pal says capital is rotating from AI stocks back into crypto, pointing to the Aug. 19-25 window when Bitcoin rose about 25% to $80,000 while Nvidia logged seven consecutive losing sessions.
- Bitcoin will likely miss most of the economic activity generated by AI agents, Pal says, predicting that activity flows instead to smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana.
- Pal's preferred macro setup is a weaker dollar, a steeper yield curve, and banks expanding lending — conditions he notes are undermined by the 10-year Treasury yield climbing to 5.29% in September and the Fed raising its benchmark rate a quarter-point.
- Pal says AI agents could issue tokens to fund projects lasting "a week, a month, a year," and that Ethereum and Solana are positioned to capture that activity through their smart contracts.
- Ethereum holds about $54.4 billion in DeFi total value locked versus Solana's $6.7 billion, but Solana logged roughly 3.2 million active addresses in a 24-hour period Monday compared with Ethereum's 387,000, according to DefiLlama.
- Pal characterized Solana's activity as "speculation" with "smaller clip sizes," pushing back on Multicoin Capital's Kyle Samani, who predicted SOL would surpass ETH's market cap this cycle.
- Pal says he has stopped issuing public Bitcoin price targets, calling a $1 million Bitcoin by 2030 a "meme" reflecting adoption and ETF interest, while saying "by 2032, yeah, I don't have an issue with that."
Why it matters: Pal's 'economic density' framework — TVL divided by active users — gives Ethereum the edge over Solana for capital, even as Solana runs roughly 8x Ethereum's active addresses. For crypto allocators weighing which smart contract chain captures the AI-agent economy, the DefiLlama split ($54.4B vs. $6.7B in DeFi TVL) is the concrete data behind Pal's cautious view on Samani's SOL-overtakes-ETH call.
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