Dan Ives Just Proved My Thesis, Accidentally
Kia ora!
Just got back home after being in Nashville for the week and this is my view while writing this.
I've been reflecting, and can't help but think back to Dan Ives making an appearance where he laid out the infrastructure roll out of AI.
And in that, I think Dan made the best case I've ever heard for the $100 trillion trade.
His argument was that the real money in AI is in the infrastructure underneath, like data centers. He's right, but that argument leads somewhere he didn't have time to take it.
The companies building the one piece of infrastructure AI literally can't function without are still being completely ignored.
And I think the window to get positioned closes in July.
I keep thinking about what Dan Ives said on that stage in Nashville.
He was walking the room through the AI buildout, but I think there's a technology that it literally cannot function without.
Let me explain what I mean, because it's right in front of me.
I'm watching the sun drop below the horizon here. Right now, it's morning in London and the European markets just opened.
In eight hours, they'll close. If it's Friday, they won't open again until Monday.
But the sun doesn't stop. By the time it rises over my deck again tomorrow morning, it will have crossed every single time zone on earth.
AI works the same way.
An AI agent doesn't care that it's 5pm in New York. It doesn't take weekends off, it doesn't wait for a clerk to get back from lunch, nor does it hold when it's on the phone with a broker.
It runs 24/7.
But here's the problem.
The financial system it has to operate in was built for humans who work 9 to 5 and take weekends.
And we're about to enter an economy where AI agents are autonomously buying compute, settling contracts, and paying other agents; at machine speed, around the clock, across every time zone the sun is currently crossing over my head.
That economy breaks on the current system.
That's where tokenization comes in.
Three things break when AI agents try to operate in the current financial system:
- Speed. An AI agent operating at machine speed can't wait around for a whole day to settle its transactions.
- Hours. AI agents run 24/7. Similarly, tokenized markets run 24/7.
- Programmability.. Right now, every financial transaction eventually hits a wall where a human has to approve, sign, or call someone. Meanwhile, tokenized assets are just code. An AI agent can interact with them directly.
This is why Larry Fink said tokenization will have a larger impact on the global economy than AI itself.
The guy running BlackRock with $11 trillion under management is saying the plumbing underneath is a bigger deal than the technology on top that everyone's excited about.
It's said that because he sees what Dan Ives was talking about in Nashville: AI requires tokenization to function.
Without tokenized rails, the agentic economy has a ceiling.
And in July, those rails go live
This is why I'm going live this week.
Ives told that us in that Nashville room to follow the infrastructure. I agree, but the infrastructure that matters most isn't just the data centers. It's the financial plumbing that lets AI actually use them, autonomously, instantly, and around the clock.
The companies building that plumbing are still under the radar. I've been covering this trade since December when the SEC first cleared the way, and I've put my entire trading account behind it.
I'm breaking down the whole thing, the companies, the technology, the timeline, and how I want to be positioned, in a free live session this Thursday, May 28th at 5 pm ET.
Cheers,
Louis Sykes
Senior Crypto Analyst, All Star Charts
