Tokenization and agentic finance drive new crypto demand drivers

Jamie Coutts identifies tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and stablecoins as key drivers reducing cyclicality in crypto. RWA volumes have increased 16x over three years, while stablecoins have doubled. Coutts noted that DEX volumes, a strong correlated return driver for Solana and Ethereum, are becoming less cyclical due to RWA trading. He views agentic finance as a major 2027 story, citing Cloudflare's enablement of the X402 protocol, which represents about 20% of web traffic and allows websites to charge for API calls. Coutts believes current X402 transaction volumes are at a low point and will ramp up over a couple of years. In his portfolio, Coutts has retilted from Bitcoin, which previously comprised 80-85% of holdings, to smart contract platforms at 30-35% and DeFi applications at 20%. He holds positions in Derive, Aave, Zcash, and Ethereum, citing Derive as a high-beta play and Zcash as a long-term hold based on capital discipline. Coutts argued that the intersection of AI agents, stablecoins, and tokenization is creating a new, more durable demand structure for crypto infrastructure and applications.