Crypto Markets Face Bumpy Road to Recovery Amid Tariff Turmoil and Geopolitical Shocks
Digital asset markets are navigating treacherous terrain as regulatory headwinds and global tensions create the perfect storm.
Tariff Tremors Rattle Crypto
Trade restrictions and protectionist policies are sending shockwaves through digital asset valuations. Market liquidity evaporates faster than a meme coin's promises when governments start playing economic hardball.
Geopolitical Fault Lines Deepen
International tensions aren't just moving traditional markets anymore. Crypto's supposed 'decoupling' theory gets tested as global risk-off sentiment hits digital assets harder than a 90% leverage liquidation.
The Long Road Back
Recovery patterns suggest this isn't your typical crypto dip. Institutional money stays sidelined while retail investors rediscover that age-old financial principle: what goes down 80% can always go down another 80%.
Market makers pull liquidity, exchanges see volume collapse, and suddenly everyone remembers that 'store of value' narrative works better when things aren't actually storing value.
Yet beneath the chaos, blockchain development continues unabated. The technology marches forward even as traders learn the hard way that in crypto, the only thing more volatile than prices are regulatory promises.
AI could make this a $2 trillion business by 2026
Wood isn't alone in her bullishness for AI and robotaxis. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, thinks the combined AI and robotaxi opportunity could create a $2 trillion opportunity by the end of 2026. "We believe the AI Revolution is now heading into its next stage of growth as the tidal wave of Big Tech capex [capital expenditure] spending coupled by enterprise use cases now exploding across verticals is creating a number of AI winners in the tech world," Ives said this week.
One of Ives' top picks just happens to be one of Wood's top portfolio holdings:(TSLA -4.97%).
"We believe Tesla is taking major steps in advancing its AI Revolution path with autonomous and robotics front and center heading into 2026 that will be a game changer and define Tesla's future," Ives said.
Tesla will have many advantages in the robotaxi market, a market that Wood believes could ultimately be worth $10 trillion globally. One of the biggest is that it can produce its own vehicles, while nearly every other would-be competitor will have to source their vehicles from third parties. This creates structural friction when it comes to scaling and data collection.
's self-driving car subsidiary Waymo, for example, plans to add 2,000 vehicles to its robotaxi fleet next year, roughly doubling its size. Tesla, on the other hand, can produce more than 5,000 vehicles daily.
Tesla is in the driver's seat when it comes to robotaxis
When it comes to vertically integrated manufacturing and sheer scaling ability, Tesla is in the driver's seat for capturing market share in the robotaxi space. Importantly, however, the robotaxi opportunity is just taking off. It could take years, or even decades, for Wood's $10 trillion prediction to come true, if it does. Wood, Ives, and even Tesla CEO Elon Musk have long been known for making overly optimistic predictions. But their Optimism is usually related to timelines, not necessarily the feasibility of their predictions.
Still, Tesla faces a difficult year ahead. I've written about how demand for electric vehicles could fall off a cliff in 2026. EV producers like Tesla, meanwhile, won't be receiving federal subsidies that formerly totaled in the billions of dollars, nor will their customers be receiving federal tax credits anymore.
But the robotaxi opportunity is large, and investors willing to look past challenging near-term conditions have an opportunity to invest in arguably the best robotaxi stock on the market today.
