Artificial intelligence is starting to do things that were formerly the exclusive domain of humans, including tasks like holding and moving money. If the “agentic AI” trend sticks, it’s thus reasonable to assume that more financial activity will be initiated by software, and, perhaps even for the benefit of that software rather than for the benefit of humans.

That brings up a fun, slightly unsettling question for investors: Could Bitcoin (BTC 1.03%) benefit by becoming a preferred store of value for AI agents?

What AI agents will actually optimize for

In practice, the AI agents of today don’t have any need for money in the sense that a human might. They’re machines designed to identify market patterns, assist with payment routing, manage liquidity in key accounts, and monitor fraud risk.

That set of jobs implies handling a very particular kind of money. In short, for an AI agent to excel at those tasks, it needs to operate within a system with low, stable costs and clear integration points for basic functionalities like identity verification and trade authorization. If those requirements aren’t met, the agent can’t do much of anything because the company or individual running it will be loath to eat the operational costs and regulatory risks associated with letting it continue, even if it’s possible to do so.

Today’s Change

(-1.03%) $-721.23

Current Price

$69220.00

Key Data Points

Market Cap

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$1.4T

Day’s Range

$67656.00 – $71487.00

52wk Range

$60255.56 – $126079.89

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Volume

67B

So even if AI agents become a real theme in the world of managing investments and making trades — and they probably will — the initial wave of agent activity will probably concentrate in quite narrow and controlled workflows rather than a sudden, industrywide automation of everything. And there simply aren’t many ways for AI to change or improve upon the Bitcoin mining process either.

Therefore, we should not expect AI agents to immediately cause noticeable changes in Bitcoin’s price, as they might not.

Where Bitcoin could see upside

The best case for Bitcoin here is not that it becomes a spendable asset for agents. It’s simply a bad fit for that purpose; it’s slow and expensive to use, and it lacks any smart contract infrastructure for automated systems to hook into gracefully. Nonetheless, Bitcoin could still gain a lot from the rise of AI if it becomes the reserve store of value that agents use to invest their earnings, assuming they ever have any.

It’s a decent choice for that purpose because it has a fixed supply schedule and a governance culture that makes major changes slow and contentious, both of which are good features for those seeking a long-lived store of value that doesn’t require a human to handle. Of course, there are other cryptocurrencies that could fill that same role, though none are as widely trusted as Bitcoin.

So, what should investors watch for if they want to see whether the AI upside in Bitcoin is actually going to play out as described here?

Look for financial institutions building agent-ready Bitcoin custody solutions with policy controls, and for large financial businesses explicitly describing Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset inside their AI-driven operations.

Until those hints appear, it’s a lot more reasonable to treat AI as a modest tailwind for Bitcoin.

Of the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world, only a handful are in positive territory for the year. Market bellwethers Bitcoin (BTC +3.95%) and Ethereum (ETH +6.41%) are down more than 15% each, and more speculative altcoins are down as much as 25%.

But amid this market mayhem, there’s one cryptocurrency that has managed to soar in value by 30% to start the year: Hyperliquid (HYPE 4.74%). If the hype about HYPE is right, this cryptocurrency could soar 80% or higher in 2026.

The hype about HYPE

Last year, Hyperliquid exploded in popularity, amid all the hoopla about crypto perpetual futures (“perps”). Hyperliquid has quickly become one of the top decentralized exchanges for trading crypto perpetual futures, and trading volume has thus far been through the roof. This is a product with immense appeal for risk-seeking crypto investors: It enables them to bet on the future price of a cryptocurrency, with no fixed expiration date and maximal leverage.

After launching at a price of $3 in November 2024, Hyperliquid eventually hit a high of $59 in September 2025. But since then, it has collapsed in price, and is currently trading for just $33 as I write this.

That’s why I think Hyperliquid could see a rally of 80% or higher in 2026. The market is just now waking up to the fact that HYPE is badly undervalued. A rally of 80% would bring it back to its price of $59 from just a few months ago.

The big catalyst for Hyperliquid in 2026

There’s one big new potential catalyst for HYPE in 2026, and that’s the imminent arrival of new “outcome contracts” for the Hyperliquid trading platform, as well as new products for options traders.

These “outcome contracts” are a hybrid of prediction market contracts and financial derivatives, in which the final outcome is binary (i.e., yes or no). If they’re a hit with investors, they could propel Hyperliquid to even higher trading volumes and even greater popularity.

Image source: Getty Images.

Some have suggested that the Hyperliquid platform might even begin to woo away traders who might have otherwise used a platform such as Kalshi or Polymarket to make a prediction about the future price of a cryptocurrency. If that’s the case, Hyperliquid might go on to set another all-time high in 2026.

Lessons from the 2022 crypto collapse

Of course, any march higher by Hyperliquid is going to be complicated if cryptocurrency behemoths Bitcoin and Ethereum can’t get things rolling again. But it’s not impossible.

As a point of reference, I looked at returns from 2022, when the entire crypto market cratered in value. Bitcoin fell by 64% and Ethereum fell by 68%. Some altcoins lost as much as 95% of their value.

But a few names managed to shine, including GMX, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange allowing users to trade with high leverage. Today, GMX is a forgotten crypto with a tiny $60 million market cap. But in 2022, it managed to deliver returns of 111% to investors, making it one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies of the year.

All of which leads me to think: 2026 could end up being the year of Hyperliquid. If HYPE is the new GMX, it could nearly double in value this year.

Open source packages published on the npm and PyPI repositories were laced with code that stole wallet credentials from dYdX developers and backend systems and, in some cases, backdoored devices, researchers said.

“Every application using the compromised npm versions is at risk ….” the researchers, from security firm Socket, said Friday. “Direct impact includes complete wallet compromise and irreversible cryptocurrency theft. The attack scope includes all applications depending on the compromised versions and both developers testing with real credentials and production end-users.”

Packages that were infected were:

npm (@dydxprotocol/v4-client-js):

• 3.4.1
• 1.22.1
• 1.15.2
• 1.0.31

PyPI (dydx-v4-client):

Perpetual trading, perpetual targeting

dYdX is a decentralized derivatives exchange that supports hundreds of markets for “perpetual trading,” or the use of cryptocurrency to bet that the value of a derivative future will rise or fall. Socket said dYdX has processed over $1.5 trillion in trading volume over its lifetime, with an average trading volume of $200 million to $540 million and roughly $175 million in open interest. The exchange provides code libraries that allow third-party apps for trading bots, automated strategies, or backend services, all of which handle mnemonics or private keys for signing.

The npm malware embedded a malicious function in the legitimate package. When a seed phrase that underpins wallet security was processed, the function exfiltrated it, along with a fingerprint of the device running the app. The fingerprint allowed the threat actor to correlate stolen credentials to track victims across multiple compromises. The domain receiving the seed was dydx[.]priceoracle[.]site, which mimics the legitimate dYdX service at dydx[.]xyz through typosquatting.