Haseeb Qureshi
Managing Partner at Dragonfly who talks crypto markets, tokenized stocks, market structure legislation such as the CLARITY Act, and onchain trading.
“Blockchains are fundamentally these kind of leaky value systems where it's very hard to capture the value you're creating. Ironically, AI is the opposite. AI is extremely straightforward to monetize. It's just you charge by the token, and we've kind of figured out that that works quite well.”
Unchained · Crypto & Web3 · November 2026
Context
The hosts were debating Vitalik Buterin's claim that ETH should be valued as a store of value rather than a fee-generating asset. Qureshi argues Ethereum's fees leak away to other layers, and contrasts that with how directly AI companies capture revenue.
Transcript
…they're just going to take this offline and they're going to cut you out of the transaction. So your ability to capture the value you're creating recurring future transactions. Well, even the first one. I mean, a lot of times, like, give me your number. And then I'll say that. But I think the
first one, they make you prepay. There's like a way for them to like force you to earn some. I mean,
a lot of the ones I've used, I have, I don't think I've sent a single dollar transaction through their rails because people are just like, yeah, call me. And then you call them. And then, you know, okay, by the time they show up, you vendor them. So, but anyway, I think Ethereum finds itself in one of those situations is that it's kind of like blockchains are fundamentally these kind of leaky value type systems that it's very hard to capture the value you're creating. Ironically, AI is the opposite. AI is extremely straightforward to monetize. It's just you charge by the token and we've kind of figured out that like that works quite well. It's not perfect because some tokens are worth way more than others and it's hard to price discriminate on, you know, if you're if you're curing cancer versus, you know, vibe coding a to-do list, obviously you'd want to charge much more for the cancer tokens and the to-do list tokens. But I think in many ways, blockchains, like L1 blockchains kind of have the worst of all worlds is that barring MEV, like MEV is the only transaction flow…
Yeah, I just, I think it's like, you know, in a world where that happens, or people's inclination is going to be, well, I'm just going to buy the next best cryptocurrency that is in theory quantum resistant. I think the answer is like, it's just for the asset class, people are going to go totally…
This will almost certainly happen. Right. And I think right now it looks like Bitcoin is way behind the ball. So I don't think this is an edge case anymore. I don't think this is like, oh, what if this takes place? I think like within two or three years, this will very high likelihood happen. And I…
Yeah, I mean, I think the quantum argument is obviously a good one for there could be another SOV. On the other hand, Ethereum seems to not be that aggressive on their quantum timelines. Every time I hear a date, I feel like it's shifting to the future. And there's sort of something interestingly…
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