AI, tokenization to usher ‘new long-tail capital market’ in 2025: Bitwise

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said 2025 may see a boom in smaller, niche businesses aided by AI and tokenization, more corporate Bitcoin adoption and an “unfreezing” of mergers and acquisitions that could benefit crypto.

In a series of X posts on Jan. 5, Horsley said he sees the world “on the precipice of change” in 2025.

Tokenization to help small businesses

In one of the X posts, Horsley made some predictions about tokenization, arguing that the focus has been on demand-side benefits, such as democratizing access to money market funds, while the real revolutionary potential lies on the supply side.

Tokenization’s transformative power may come from enabling a vast untapped supply of smaller businesses to access capital markets, he said. 

The real-world asset (RWA) tokenization industry may be the next key narrative in the crypto space in 2025, according to Brickken founder and CEO Edwin Mata. “Real-world asset tokenization is transforming traditional markets by enabling assets like real estate, debt and equity to be digitized and traded on the blockchain,” he told Cointelegraph. 

AI to lead to explosion of micro companies

“I think AI may lead to an explosion of companies and tokenized companies,” said Horsley in a separate post sharing his thoughts on artificial intelligence advances in the coming year. 

“AI could massively increase the number of niche businesses. These could never go public but could tokenize. It could be a major new long-tail capital market.” 

“Bitcoin Standard” corporations

Horsley also predicted that a major theme in 2025 will be the arrival of “Bitcoin Standard Corporations,” companies that hold BTC on their balance sheets. “2025 is going to see a lot of corporations joining the Bitcoin standard,” Horsley said. 

MicroStrategy, which has hinted at another Monday purchase, is the largest corporate holder of BTC, with 446,400 coins worth around $43.7 billion at current market prices.

In late 2024, several smaller companies announced that they had started strategies to invest and hold Bitcoin as part of their treasuries. 

Unfreezing M&A

The forthcoming Trump administration in the US may “unfreeze” mergers and acquisitions for large corporations, which is good for crypto, according to Horsley. 

Related: Top crypto investments in 2025: Bitcoin, AI projects, tokenized assets

Horsley predicted that large corporations such as the “magnificent 7” — which consists of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — “may finally be able to wield their market cap,” in a post on X on Jan. 6. 

“The big may get bigger, and the middle may shrink,” he said before adding, “If that happens, I think it will accelerate crypto” on the premise that large corporations operate under self-interest rather than that of their users.  

“The conceptual premise of crypto is not trusting large institutions to do what’s in your best interest. The big getting bigger accentuates this.”

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