AI Is Making Crypto ‘More Relevant,’ Says Fundstrat’s Tom Lee As BlackRock Defends Bitcoin

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee said crypto was “more relevant today given the rapidly increasing capabilities of AI and robotics,” backing up a new BlackRock (BLK) report that reaffirmed the asset manager’s bullish long-term case for Bitcoin (BTC) despite a roughly 50% drawdown from its all-time high.

Lee, who heads research at Fundstrat Global Advisors along with serving as the Chairman at Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), said in a post on X on Tuesday that he agreed with BlackRock’s view and anticipated “growing use cases” for crypto. He also said Ethereum (ETH) would be “the most important L1,” referring to layer-1 blockchains, the base networks on which decentralized applications are built.

Why Bitcoin Is Down: BlackRock’s Case

In a report published on Monday, BlackRock explained that Bitcoin's roughly 50% pullback from its October 2025 all-time high was driven by crypto-native deleveraging and shifting investor flows rather than a breakdown in Bitcoin's long-term investment thesis.

Speculative positioning became extreme as Bitcoin rallied above $120,000 in October last year, the report said, with futures open interest hitting as high as $90 billion and concentrated heavily in leveraged perpetual futures on offshore exchanges. The report also explained that large-scale deleveraging in the precious metals and crypto markets was triggered by macro-driven risk-off catalysts, including headlines around China tariffs, which led to a liquidation cascade that drove prices below $60,000 by June this year.