Here are the overlooked ways to play AI, crypto and quantum trends, says this tech investor

By Steve GoldsteinEric Jackson says bitcoin miners can morph into AI data-center companiesThere's not a lot of cease and still plenty of fire after Israel and Iran publicly committed to ending their 12-day war. But markets are willing to take "yes" for an answer even if the missiles are flying.So the question now is whether the stock market will keep marching higher, which comes as some tech IPOs, including CoreWeave (CRWV) and most recently Circle Internet Group (CRCL), have caught fire. Tech investor Eric Jackson, the founder and president of EMJ Capital, admits the stablecoin provider's meteoric performance - up some 900% since its $31 IPO - has taken him by surprise."No, I didn't see it coming," Jackson said in a phone interview with MarketWatch. "Initially I did think of Circle as more of like a money-market fund, and therefore, what's the growth in that? What's the strategic value in that? It's been interesting to see such a dramatic repricing in real time in the public markets," he said.He said stablecoin legislation working its way through Congress is one reason for the gains, but he also credited a world where investors are keeping more of their assets in crypto and less in fiat. Coinbase Global (COIN) and Robinhood Markets (HOOD), he said, are similarly positioning themselves to get a bigger slice of financial assets.Jackson said one cryptocurrency that has not benefited so far is Ethereum, which he holds through BlackRock's ETF, the iShares Ethereum Trust ETHA, which is down 31% this year. He said a world where more transactions are going to be conducted in crypto will be built on Ethereum."Ethereum has sort of been forgotten about," he said. "If bitcoin could be the digital gold of the crypto world, Ethereum is really the transaction rail that things are going to happen on."Jackson also likes the prospects of two bitcoin miners, Iren (IREN) and Cipher Mining (CIFR), as data-center plays to profit from the continued growth in artificial-intelligence demand. Bitcoin miners already have been running data centers and have the land and power connections that can naturally transition to AI use.He pointed out Nvidia (NVDA) is now priced for $40 billion revenue quarters going forward, and more recently companies like Oracle (ORCL) and CoreWeave are surging. "For the CoreWeaves and Oracles and others to deliver on the market cap that's been built into their stocks, in the expectation that they're going to be a huge part of value chain, they have to be able to build out the infrastructure themselves to power that growth or they have to partner," said Jackson. "And I think that some miners are perfectly positioned to be partners in that world."Applied Digital (APLD) already rallied on a data-center deal with CoreWeave. "Oftentimes these companies are small, so when they find those deals, they get a dramatic kind of movement. So I think Iren and Cipher will probably find those kinds of deals this year and they'll see a similar kind of repricing."Jackson says in another hot space, quantum, he likes a company being overlooked, Canada's BTQ Technologies (BTQQF), which at the moment generates little revenue and is loss making. "It's really early days still for quantum, but it doesn't surprise me that the speculation has prepped into this market because it's kind of like the next level, next generation for AI," he says. "It's going to do some very highly specialized tasks that AI can't do."Investors have been bidding up many of the quantum stocks that went public through special-purpose acquisition company deals in 2021. BTQ, he says, is unlike those companies because it's trying to provide a layer of quantum security for the legacy hardware and software companies whose cryptography could be attacked by advanced computing powers. He expects BTQ to scale up their business by doing deals with chipmakers or hardware providers.Legacy players in the cybersecurity industry will have a tough time pivoting to quantum, he says. "It's a different beast and different animal," he says. "So I like the BTQ team because they've been working on these problems for eight, ten years."The marketsU.S. stock-market futures (ES00) (NQ00) rallied, while crude-oil (CL00) and gold (GC00) futures slumped. Treasury yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y were stable. Key asset performance Last 5d 1m YTD 1y S&P 500 6025.17 -0.13% 3.83% 2.44% 10.60% Nasdaq Composite 19,630.97 -0.36% 4.77% 1.66% 12.20% 10-year Treasury 4.343 -4.50 -10.60 -23.30 9.10 Gold 3335.2 -2.09% 1.08% 26.37% 43.04% Oil 66.44 -9.90% 8.79% -7.56% -17.75% Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points Need to Know starts early and is updated until the opening bell, but sign up here to get it delivered once to your email box. The emailed version will be sent out at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern.The buzzPresident Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, which could end 12 days of conflict. Trump expressed unhappiness, with profanity, in an early morning gaggle with reporters on how the ceasefire hasn't been sustained as yet.Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is due to give testimony to Congress, after two of his colleagues backed the idea for a July rate cut. Trump in an early morning post asked members of Congress to criticize Powell for not cutting rates. In prepared comments, Powell stated that "for the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance."Members of the NATO security alliance were meeting as they planned to commit to raising defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, with another 1.5% for broader security-related investments.KB Home (KBH) cut its outlook for the year and said market conditions had softened.Starbucks (SBUX) said it wasn't currently looking to sell its China business, following a report from Caixan Global said it held preliminary talks with private-equity firms to do so.Best of the webTesla robotaxi incidents caught on camera in Austin draw regulators' attention.$30 minimum wage has L.A. hotel owners in revolt.Some Carnival Cruise regulars say they're jumping ship. Why Wall Street isn't worried.The chartFrom Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius, comes this chart showing the dollar has weakened despite a recovery in the growth prospects of the U.S. vs. the rest of the world. "Our interpretation is that the cyclical tailwinds aren't strong enough to overcome the more secular headwinds, i.e. still-high valuation as well as the greater difficulty of attracting unhedged capital inflows to cover the 4% of GDP current account deficit in a world where US economic performance looks less exceptional," said Hatzius. The firm expects further significant dollar depreciation against a broad range of currencies including the euro, the Chinese yuan, and the Japanese yen.Top tickersHere were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern. Security Company name TSLA Tesla NVDA Nvidia GME GameStop CRCL Circle Internet Group PLTR Palantir Technologies AMD Advanced Micro Devices AAPL Apple HIMS Hims & Hers Health AMZN Amazon.com TSM Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Random readsResidents of Venice, armed with inflatable crocodiles, force Jeff Bezos to move a wedding party.It turns out that whales can use tools - kelp, to be clear, and not screwdrivers - in what's seen as a first outside of primates.The family that runs a fake dental clinic together, stays together?-Steve GoldsteinThis content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.