Bitwise CIO predicts 10-100x blockchain transaction growth

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan expects blockchain transaction volumes to multiply by 10 to 100 times in the coming years. The catalyst, he said, is a pair of trends already accelerating: the tokenization of real-world assets and the rise of autonomous AI agents that trade on-chain without human intervention.

Hougan argues that investors are pricing crypto protocols based on today's activity, not the wave of volume that tokenization and machine-driven finance will bring. The numbers behind the tokenization thesis have moved well past the pilot stage, he said. Tokenized US Treasuries alone have reached $12.88 billion, a figure that would have seemed absurd a few years ago when the concept was largely theoretical.

Ethereum remains the center of gravity for this market, hosting roughly 61.4% of all tokenized assets globally. That slice represents about $206.2 billion in value, making Ethereum the settlement layer for institutions bringing traditional finance on-chain, Hougan noted.

BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized money market fund has grown to a supply of around $3 billion. A single product from a single asset manager now rivals many mid-cap crypto protocols in scale. Ondo Finance, a leading player in the tokenized asset space, has surpassed $2.5 billion in total value locked across its products. The platform specializes in yield-generating instruments, a category that marks a shift from the purely speculative trading that dominated earlier crypto cycles, Hougan said.

Legacy banks are joining the push. JPMorgan's Kinexys platform has processed over $3 trillion in cumulative transactions, averaging about $7 billion per day. That is one of the world's largest banks routing money through blockchain infrastructure, he said.

The AI Agent Angle

The second pillar of Hougan's forecast might be even more consequential. Autonomous AI agents – software programs that can independently analyze markets and execute trades – are expected to handle at least 15% of daily financial decisions by 2030, he said. These agents do not just follow pre-programmed rules. They can adapt, learn, and interact with DeFi protocols directly. Traditional financial infrastructure was not built for machine-to-machine transactions at scale, Hougan said. Blockchains are.

The broader "agentic economy," where AI agents handle tasks from trading to capital allocation, could reach $30 trillion, he predicted. Even if blockchain captures a fraction of that activity, the transaction volume implications are enormous.

This creates a feedback loop. More tokenized assets give AI agents more instruments to trade. More AI agents trading drives demand for on-chain infrastructure. Better infrastructure makes it easier to tokenize new assets. Hougan's core message to investors is that current crypto valuations do not reflect this coming activity. If transaction volumes rise by 10 to 100 times, the fee revenue flowing to blockchain protocols – particularly Layer 1 networks that serve as settlement layers – would grow proportionally, he said.

The current DeFi ecosystem has a total value locked of about $76 billion. Stablecoins, the primary medium of exchange for on-chain transactions, have reached a market cap of roughly $300 billion, with Tether's USDT accounting for about 61% of that total. These are the pipes through which Hougan's predicted surge would flow, he said.

A nuance: higher transaction volumes do not automatically translate to higher token prices. Networks need to capture value from that activity, and fee structures vary significantly across different blockchains. Ethereum's recent struggles with fee revenue despite growing Layer 2 activity illustrate this tension, Hougan said.

Ethereum's dominance in tokenized assets gives it a structural advantage. Alternative networks are courting institutional users with lower costs and faster settlement. If transaction volumes grow 100x, the question of which chains capture that growth becomes the most consequential bet in crypto, he said.

For traditional finance participants already building on-chain infrastructure – BlackRock, JPMorgan – the transition is underway. Those still on the sidelines face a decision that gets more expensive to defer each quarter, Hougan said.

The AI agent dimension adds a final layer. If machines become significant market participants, the strategies that work for human traders may need to evolve. Competing against software that can analyze thousands of tokenized assets simultaneously, execute trades in milliseconds, and operate around the clock is a different game entirely, he said.

Hougan did not assign a timeline for his 10-100x forecast. The forces he cites – institutional tokenization and AI-native finance – are already reshaping how value moves through the global financial system.