Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan says the AI trade leads to the same destination for investors no matter how the story ends: higher Bitcoin.
In a note to investors published Wednesday, Hougan framed the argument through the lens of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books he read as a child, where dramatically different decisions often funneled readers toward the same ending.
Three macro paths, one Bitcoin conclusion
Hougan wrote that the range of macro outcomes facing investors today is the widest he has seen in his career, with pundits split between AI doubling GDP and AI causing human extinction. His approach was to walk through each path and see where it ends.
If AI delivers what he called "superabundance," productivity surges and intelligence-based work becomes cheap. In that setting, Hougan argued, abundance becomes a tailwind for truly scarce assets because value shifts toward things that cannot be reproduced, including waterfront land, gold, and Bitcoin.
If the AI bubble bursts and triggers a 2008-style recession, Bitcoin would initially sell off with other risk assets, he wrote. But Hougan argued that a government bailout would follow and that the money printing tied to it would be massive, given that the AI buildout is "the biggest infrastructure investment in the history of America."
"This is exactly the environment bitcoin was built for," he wrote, adding that the odds of a bailout are "nearly 100%."
The third scenario is a muddle-through outcome with roughly 3% growth and 4% rates. In that case, Hougan said Bitcoin can keep doing what it has already been doing: attracting ETF flows, advisor adoption, and allocations to corporate and sovereign balance sheets as government debt continues to build. "Bitcoin wins by showing up," he wrote.
The note arrives during a period of macro anxiety
The memo was published as the kind of macro concern Hougan described is already in focus. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warned this week that a halt to data center construction could push the U.S. into recession, highlighting how tightly AI infrastructure and the broader economy have become linked.
Hougan also stressed the path would not be straight
Hougan included clear caveats. He said Bitcoin will not rise in a straight line and pointed to the 2020 COVID panic, when the asset fell 50% in a matter of days before rebounding roughly 20-fold.
He also said the thesis could fail for reasons unrelated to the macro backdrop. Among the risks he listed were a global government crackdown and the threat quantum computing may pose to older wallets. He noted that researchers are still debating whether AI could break crypto encryption before quantum computers arrive, adding to that concern.
His bottom line for long-term investors
Even with those caveats, Hougan's conclusion was direct. For long-term investors, he wrote, the big macro questions "matter less than most people think" because nearly every path still ends with Bitcoin.