Tether CEO Says AI Bubble Is Bitcoin’s Biggest Risk In 2026 2025

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says an AI-driven bubble could shake Bitcoin, and shares his outlook on Europe, DATs and tokenization in 2026.

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, has raised concerns about how a potential AI bubble could affect Bitcoin by 2026.

Ardoino shared his outlook on Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto industry on Thursday during the Bitcoin Capital podcast, co-hosted by Bitfinex Securities and Blockstream.

The executive said he sees Bitcoin “still too much correlated” to capital markets, thus potentially being impacted by the AI bubble, or a theorized stock market bubble growing amid the current AI boom.

“That is the so-called AI bubble, this concern about the fact that AI companies are spending too much money in AI infrastructure and data centers and trying to build a gazillion gigawatts of power and installing GPUs,” Ardoino said.

In a potential scenario where AI sentiment shifts in 2026, the associated stock market turmoil in the US could affect the price of Bitcoin, Tether CEO predicted.

Apart from AI bubble-associated risks, Ardoino sees no other major risks to Bitcoin performance in 2026 due to growing adoption by pension funds and governments.

“So I would imagine that sharp corrections of 80%, like we saw in 2022 or early 2018, might not be the case anymore,” Ardoino predicted.

Ardoino also expressed bullishness on real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, saying that tokenized securities and commodities are “going to be massive.”

“The only downside I see is like. Bitcoin is for Bitcoin, right? You don’t want 99% of Bitcoin being institutionalized,” he said.

Source: CoinTelegraph