The optimism in crypto that followed Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 has all but faded as Bitcoin takes a plunge, falling 45% from its October high.
On the regulatory front, the standoff between the banking industry and crypto stakeholders over stablecoin yields in the CLARITY Act is being closely monitored.
Lastly, AI continues to dominate headlines with its feared disruptions. Invezz spoke to Bryan Benson, CEO of Aurum, a financial technology company using AI and blockchain for neobanking, wealth management, and crypto trading, for his commentary.
Benson, a former Binance managing director who steered its Latin American operations, opens up about what is inhibiting AI’s growth in crypto, why the conflict over stablecoin yields is “a competition for deposits dressed up as consumer protection,” and why Bitcoin’s crash is a familiar pattern rather than a structural reset.
Excerpts:
Bryan Benson
How building Binance in Latin America helped in building Aurum
Invezz: You helmed Binance’s Latin American operations. How did that experience help in building Aurum?
I spent years building Binance’s presence across Latin America, growing the user base from a few hundred thousand to tens of millions.
I set up fiat on-ramps, navigated local regulators, and figured out what people needed from a crypto platform.
You learn things on the ground that you never pick up from headquarters.
The same problem showed up in every market. Users had access but no real tools.
They were trading against algorithms with nothing but a price chart and gut instinct.
Retail infrastructure hadn’t caught up with what institutions were running. Aurum gave me the opportunity to build for that problem directly.
We took everything I learned about scaling in complex markets and paired it with the AI execution layer that retail never had.
The goal from day one was to give everyday users the same systematic advantages that professional desks take for granted.
Level of AI in crypto going up but adoption getting stalled by these factors
Invezz: How has the use of AI in crypto trading evolved, and what is standing in the way of its even more widespread adoption?
Five years ago, AI in crypto meant basic bots running grid strategies on a single exchange.
Now you have systems scanning thousands of order books, parsing on-chain data, and executing across multiple venues in milliseconds.
Algorithmic systems already handle over 60% of volume in US equities and over 70% in FX. Crypto is catching up fast.
Adoption still stalls in a few places. Most AI models train on historical data, and crypto regimes shift quickly.
A system that performed well in a trending market can fall apart when conditions flip.
Then there’s the black-box problem. Users and regulators both want to understand how decisions get made, and most systems can’t explain themselves.
The biggest obstacle is the “set and forget” mindset. AI needs supervision, parameter tuning, and human judgment on macro shifts.
People who treat it like a slot machine get slot-machine results.
Blocking stablecoin yield to unbanked people is gatekeeping
Invezz: You are a champion of financial inclusion. The CLARITY Act under consideration is being held up because of one sticky point — whether crypto platforms should be able to pay customers yield or interest on their stablecoin balances. What is your view?
The whole fight over stablecoin yield is a competition for deposits dressed up as consumer protection.
The banking lobby argues that yield-bearing stablecoins will drain deposits from the traditional system.
Standard Chartered estimates $500 billion could move out of banks and into stablecoins by 2028. That is a sign that the real concern here is competition, not financial stability.
The GENIUS Act already blocks issuers from paying yield directly. The Senate draft of the CLARITY Act goes further and tries to close the loopholes around third-party rewards too.
Over 125 crypto companies pushed back for a reason. Coinbase pulled its support. The White House meeting on February 3rd ended without a deal.
For the 1.4 billion unbanked people worldwide, stablecoin yield is one of the few ways to earn anything on their savings.
Blocking it to protect deposit bases at regulated banks is exactly the kind of gatekeeping crypto was built to bypass.
How can AI promote financial inclusion
Invezz: How does AI tie into your vision of greater financial inclusion?
Traditional finance locks people out through complexity.
You need a credit score to borrow, a bank account to save, and enough financial literacy to navigate products that were designed for people who already have money.
AI strips most of that away.
At Aurum, the AI handles execution, risk management, and yield optimization without asking the user to understand how any of it works.
Someone in Lagos or São Paulo sees a dashboard with results. The flash loan arbitrage, the DEX routing, the position sizing — it all stays buried in the infrastructure.
The other piece is credit.
AI can assess risk using on-chain behavior, wallet history, and transaction patterns instead of traditional credit scores that don’t exist in most emerging markets.
That opens lending and borrowing to people the legacy system never bothered to serve.
On BTC collapse: Trump bump erased but its not a structural reset
Invezz: Bitcoin has been in a free fall. Are investors losing confidence in near-term profit expectations? Are we in a temporary downturn or a structural reset?
Bitcoin is down roughly 45% from its October high and just had its worst single-day drop since the FTX collapse.
The entire Trump bump has been erased.
US spot ETFs that bought 46,000 bitcoin this time last year are now net sellers, with over $3 billion in outflows in January alone.
That’s institutional money heading for the exits, and it drags sentiment with it.
The “digital gold” narrative took a serious hit. Gold is up around 24% since October, while bitcoin dropped by half.
Investors who bought the hedge thesis are watching it fail in real time.
I don’t think this is a structural reset, though. Bitcoin has dropped 74% before and recovered.
The 200-day moving average is around $58,000 to $60,000, which lines up with the realized price. We’ve seen this pattern play out in every cycle.
Higher USDT likely but floor is closer than most think
Invezz: At the same time, USDT dominance breached the 7% mark a few days ago. Do you think it could go higher (which means BTC will move even lower)?
USDT dominance hit 7.4% on February 2nd, the highest level in two years.
When capital rotates out of volatile assets and into stablecoins, dominance goes up. When confidence returns, it comes back down.
The 2022 market bottom coincided with USDT dominance around 9.5%, and we’re not there yet.
Stablecoin inflows to exchanges dropped from $9.7 billion monthly in October to negative flows at the start of this year.
That tells you capital is still leaving risk assets and parking in USDT.
Can it go higher? Yes. Thin liquidity, ongoing ETF outflows, and a broader selloff across tech stocks and precious metals all point in that direction.
Bitcoin’s weekly RSI dipped below 30 for the first time since mid-2022, and historically, that has preceded bottoms forming within three to six months.
So higher USDT dominance is likely, but we’re probably closer to the floor than most people think.
On USDT as safe haven for crypto and concentration risks
Invezz: Is USDT becoming the real safe haven of crypto markets? Is the crypto ecosystem dangerously dependent on a single private stablecoin issuer?
USDT dominates stablecoin trading, stablecoin savings, and stablecoin user growth by wide margins.
When the market sold off in Q4, Tether’s market cap actually grew while its closest competitors shrank or collapsed.
So yes, USDT is the safe haven. That’s not really up for debate at this point.
The crypto ecosystem runs on a single private company that still faces scrutiny over reserve transparency.
If confidence in Tether ever cracked, the damage would cascade through every exchange and every trading pair that uses it as a base.
No competitor matches Tether’s $140B in circulation. Circle’s USDC sits at $50B. The concentration risk persists.
How AI trading systems are adding to the rush into stablecoins
Invezz: Are AI trading systems also accelerating the shift into stablecoins during market stress?
Yes. Bots trade on fixed rules: if Bitcoin falls 8% in an hour, sell. If portfolio volatility exceeds 15%, reduce exposure.
The algo executes immediately. Most crypto bots exit through BTC/USDT because Tether offers the deepest order books.
A $2M position can unwind in seconds without slippage. The bot sells everything volatile, sits in Tether.
When volatility drops back under the threshold, it re-enters.
A human trader might hesitate, hold through a dip, or wait for confirmation. An algorithm reads the order-book shift and executes in milliseconds.
Now picture thousands of bots hitting the same conditions at roughly the same time. The rush into stablecoins compounds on itself, and the selloff gets steeper.
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