Interview with Haseeb, Managing Partner at Dragonfly: “AI Armageddon Is Still Far Off; Smart Contracts Are Laws Designed for Machines”
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Interview with Haseeb, Managing Partner at Dragonfly: “AI Armageddon Is Still Far Off; Smart Contracts Are Laws Designed for Machines”
In the crypto world, the first lesson you learn is the importance of “surviving.”
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsHost: Mr. Z (@168MrZ)
Guest: Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb)
“In crypto, survival is the ultimate alpha. As long as you’re still at the table, you’re entitled to the feast.” In a special Consensus HK episode of the East-West capital dialogue series 168X, Dragonfly Capital’s Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi—drawing on his eight-year frontline experience navigating crypto cycles—delved deeply into the symbiotic relationship between AI and cryptocurrency, survival strategies for bear markets, and the industry’s historic transition from “wild frontier” to “institutionalization.”
This legendary investor, who rose from Texas Hold’em poker tables, began his professional poker career at age 16 with just $50, and by age 19 ranked among the world’s top ten online heads-up no-limit Texas Hold’em players. He then made a seamless pivot to Silicon Valley, working first at Airbnb and later at Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), before ultimately leading one of the most influential venture capital firms in the crypto space—Dragonfly Capital—with over $5 billion in total assets under management. Just one week prior to this interview, Dragonfly announced the successful close of its fourth fund at $650 million, launching an aggressive counter-cyclical investment push amid the bear market—further validating its “bottom-fishing” investment philosophy.
This article presents a distilled summary of the 168X (@168X_Fortune) episode—a premier dialogue platform that bridges Eastern wisdom and Western innovation, focusing on frontier domains including AI, blockchain, robotics, space technology, and bioengineering, and exploring how technology, capital, and humanistic intelligence will reshape the future of human civilization.
The End of an Era: When Competitors Leave the Table
The interview opened with a piece of industry-shaking news.
Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, announced his departure from the crypto industry after nearly a decade, shifting focus toward emerging fields including AI, robotics, and longevity science.
To Haseeb, this was more than just breaking news—it was a deeply personal farewell.
“Interestingly, Kyle was the first VC I met after entering the crypto world,” he recalled. “We entered the industry almost simultaneously in 2017. He and I were polar opposites—we disagreed on virtually everything. Yet he was my most respected competitor.”
Haseeb described Kyle as “an outsider”: no prestigious investment pedigree, no elite academic credentials, no backing from top-tier institutions—“just someone who figured things out independently, carving a path through sheer personal branding and extreme contrarian thinking.”
“Seeing him leave left me with a profound sense of melancholy,” Haseeb admitted candidly. “It felt like the end of our generation’s youth. We entered this industry in our twenties, when everything felt magical, futuristic. Now, the industry has grown up.”
We’ve Won Too Much: From Rebels to Rule-Makers
What marks the industry’s “coming of age”? Haseeb answered with a vivid analogy:
“Back then, stablecoin market cap was just a few hundred million dollars. Today it’s $300 billion. The U.S. Treasury Secretary has publicly forecast stablecoins reaching $3 trillion within a decade—15% of total money supply.”
“We thought we were breaking rules. But now, we are the ones making them.”
“In a sense, we’ve won too much,” he said, with mixed emotion. “Imagine a group of mountaineers who painstakingly climbed to the summit—only to watch tour buses pull up, delivering tourists straight to the top. Yes, we won—but seeing victory arrive this way leaves us with an indescribable mix of emotions.”
BlackRock has entered the space; J.P. Morgan has issued its own tokenized dollar. That youthful, decentralized utopia we once chased has materialized—not through grassroots rebellion, but through full-scale Wall Street adoption.
“When we entered crypto, we pursued a wild, sci-fi future. This isn’t the future we imagined—but it’s far more successful than we ever dreamed.”
The original crypto-punks achieved their dream of “mass adoption”—just not quite the script they wrote.
AI Needs Crypto: Smart Contracts Are Law for Machines
As AI captures the spotlight across global capital markets, has crypto’s value narrative become obsolete?
Haseeb’s answer stands apart:
“AI is the most important technology of the 21st century—but like many technologies, it depends on complementary infrastructure. AI needs energy; AI needs networks—the vast troves of data flowing across those networks feed large language models. Cryptocurrency fits precisely the same pattern.”
He crystallized this convergence into one core use case: How do AI agents settle commercial transactions with each other?
“Your agent and my agent don’t share the same fiat currency or banking system. You’re in Taiwan; I’m in the U.S. How does my agent do business with yours? The answer has been there all along: cryptocurrency.”
Haseeb went further, offering a profound insight: The true users of smart contracts aren’t humans—they’re AI.
“Consider traditional legal contracts: I don’t know your jurisdiction; I don’t know how to sue your agent in court. Even if litigation begins, filing takes months, both sides hire expensive lawyers, and proceedings stretch over years. But AI agents operate orders of magnitude faster than the human brain—courts are designed for human timescales; agents operate on entirely different ones.”
“Legal outcomes are probabilistic. How will the judge rule? What will the jury decide? Nobody knows. But smart contracts say the same thing every time—as long as you can read the code. Predictability is exactly what AI agents require.”
This means the crypto industry’s long-espoused narrative—that “smart contracts will replace law”—has struggled to gain traction in the human world, yet finds its perfect application within AI-agent economies.
The Industrial Revolution Took 50 Years: Don’t Overestimate AI’s Pace
Facing market speculation about whether Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is imminent, Haseeb displayed the characteristic calm of a top-tier venture capitalist:
“When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, many predicted AGI was just years away. Nearly four years have passed. Is this AGI? Perhaps. But if so, it hasn’t shown up in GDP figures—or unemployment rates. Walk down the streets of Hong Kong: everything looks normal—no buildings on fire, no mass layoffs.”
He invoked the Industrial Revolution as a historical benchmark: “The Industrial Revolution was the most consequential event in human economic history. Yet from the commercial deployment of the steam engine to measurable GDP impact took a full 50 years. Before that, every article proclaiming ‘the end is nigh’ was simply premature.”
Haseeb stressed that no one can accurately predict timelines. “If ‘imminent’ means within two years? Highly unlikely. Within ten years? Possible. Within twenty to thirty years? Almost certain. It all hinges on the timeline.”
“AI will undoubtedly be a disruptive technology. But ‘when’ is an entirely different question. Don’t draw trend lines too aggressively—unless you have strong evidence that the shift is already underway.”
Bear Market Survival Rules: Stay at the Table
Toward the end of the interview, Haseeb brought the discussion back to current market conditions: a demoralized, confidence-shaken crypto bear market.
He candidly acknowledged it’s an exceptionally difficult period: “This is especially hard for those who entered the industry driven by excitement and momentum. People treat price as a report card—if prices fall, they feel they’ve done something wrong. But if you’ve been around long enough, you know that’s not true.”
Haseeb pointed to October 11 last year as a pivotal turning point. That day, former U.S. President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese goods via Truth Social, coinciding with China’s newly announced rare-earth export controls—triggering a sharp global risk-asset sell-off. Crypto bore the brunt: Bitcoin plunged 13% in one hour; Ethereum dropped over 16%; numerous altcoins halved—or vanished—in minutes.
“That day, multiple exchanges went offline. We witnessed the largest single-day liquidation event in crypto history—over $19 billion in leveraged positions forcibly closed, and 1.6 million trading accounts liquidated,” Haseeb recounted. This disaster’s scale was nearly 20 times larger than the 2020 COVID crash—and vastly exceeded liquidations during the 2022 FTX collapse.
“But what was truly puzzling was what happened afterward,” Haseeb noted. “If you overlay Bitcoin’s price chart against the Nasdaq and S&P 500—you’ll see they diverged sharply after 10/11. U.S. equities rebounded, but crypto didn’t follow. A fundamental shift in market structure occurred—and to this day, we lack a satisfying explanation.”
He believes precisely because no clear ‘why’ exists, this bear market has weighed especially heavily on investors’ psychology.
Yet he remains less pessimistic about crypto’s long-term future.
“Crypto markets are momentum-driven—and autocorrelated. Once momentum starts moving in one direction, it persists. The same holds true in reverse: once upward momentum begins, it sustains itself.”
He concluded with a piece of wisdom drawn straight from the poker table—the central tenet of his eight-year crypto journey:
“The first lesson you learn in crypto is the importance of survival.
As long as you remain at the table, you get to witness what happens next.
The only way you lose is by being eliminated.
As long as you’re not eliminated, you hold a seat.
And as long as you hold a seat, you get to enjoy the feast.”
About Dragonfly Capital
Dragonfly is one of the world’s most influential crypto-focused venture capital firms, managing over $5 billion in assets. Co-led by Bo Feng and Haseeb Qureshi, its team spans San Francisco and Asia, with investments spanning landmark projects including Polymarket, Ethena, MakerDAO, Compound, Avalanche, and NEAR Protocol. In February 2026, Dragonfly closed its fourth fund at $650 million, focusing on stablecoins, DeFi, prediction markets, and AI-agent payment infrastructure.
About 168X
168X is a premier dialogue platform that deeply connects Eastern wisdom with Western innovation, dedicated to exploring how technology, capital, and humanistic intelligence will reshape the future of human civilization. The show focuses on frontier fields—including AI, blockchain, robotics, space technology, and bioengineering—and engages global leaders and thought architects in conversation, revealing the core drivers of future wealth and innovation through a uniquely dual East-West lens. Hosted by ex-banker Mr. Z.
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