Crypto Long & Short: What will the AI agents run on?

Identity is a good example. As autonomous agents become more capable, markets will need ways to determine who or what is behind a transaction and what an agent is authorized to do. The same applies to provenance. When AI systems consume data, create intellectual property or execute transactions, establishing where information came from and who owns what becomes increasingly important. Blockchains will not solve every aspect of these problems, but their ability to provide verifiable, shared records makes them a natural part of the infrastructure stack.

There is also a capital-markets angle that I think gets overlooked. Tokenization is already bringing traditional assets onto blockchain rails, while stablecoins have demonstrated that meaningful financial activity can operate onchain. At the same time, AI is making financial decision-making increasingly automated. Those trends are currently developing separately, but their convergence could be significant. An AI agent that can analyze markets but cannot efficiently hold, exchange or settle assets is inherently limited. Put programmable intelligence together with programmable assets, and the possibilities become much more interesting.

For investors, this requires some discipline because technological convergence does not mean every project exposed to AI and crypto deserves a premium valuation. We saw during previous crypto cycles how quickly narratives could outperform the fundamentals, and the same risk exists around AI at present. I would rather look for infrastructure solving a genuine problem created by greater automation: payments, settlement, identity, cybersecurity, custody and the rails connecting traditional and digital markets.