Li Jin on Warpcast

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Li Jin pfp

I don't understand the reasoning behind "AI agents will need to transact via crypto" - why? I've seen AI agents where users just auth with their own traditional payment credentials to interact with websites. Why crypto? (trying to engage in a good faith discussion)

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kk pfp

@notdevin.eth some kind of friction between banking maybe? you can authorize a third party to perform transactions on your behalf, but are AIs a third party entity? needless to say there's simply less friction for ai to work with crypto, obviously. where traditional banking is made for humans, crypto is technical.

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osama pfp

canonical answer is permission-less (don't need human auth or blocked from accessing API), borderless and can do things programmatically (esp post-4337). I agree BUT the real juice flows when agents do things at agent speed (ie ~speed of light). Tradfi infra is not ready for every consumer (globally) to behave like ultra-high frequency trader. And anything that humans can take from atoms to bits, we do

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David pfp

@promptrotator.eth

For me, the framing should be less that AI agents need to transact in crypto, and more that agents transacting in crypto is inevitable. If you think about how the onchain economy will be shaped—who is transacting, and around what? The majority of volume on Uniswap is already done by bots, and a strong case can be made that many other projects follow this pattern. My bet is that AI agents using permissionless protocols will outperform many existing services — buying a stock will be faster, safer, and more private on products built with agent + crypto rails over any of the alternatives. Payments do fall under this umbrella, but I think they are only a piece of the puzzle for what the future will look like.

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Aleph 🎩 ↑ pfp

I think the best argument for this is a lot more automation/programmability: If AI wanted to round trip a currency trade, it’s too hard to do in trad fi: needs to login to BoA, send to fidelity, use fidelity API to do trade etc. The moment anyone in that chain has a closed system or no API, difficulty spikes.

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Neel pfp

totally agree - was mulling this over myself as part of a broader exploration on crypto X ai copium

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timbeiko.eth pfp

The AI agents don’t need to get permissions (API keys) from humans to use the chain 😛 also, for similar use cases where crypto is better than, say, Stripe (composability, no geographical txn costs, etc.)

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rileybeans pfp

I agree with you. Not sure this is necessary, but then again, this is crypto 😅

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ian pfp

IMHO the big opportunity is “the ability for AI to pay for things, hold things of value, exchange value, or create things of value—on behalf of itself or others—is how AI gets true agency.” An example demo I built earlier this year: https://x.com/iandaos/status/1725191487795970321?s=46&t=FY7tsm1UmvXgmq86lq6A6Q

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PaperDog pfp

Crypto has near instant finality. Any other type of rails whether financial or not are not final. How can you trust an AI agent if the things they are doing can be reversed or compromised?

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Serg 🎩🔵⛓️✈️ pfp

Serg 🎩🔵⛓️✈️

To pump tokens of the VCs behind those agents.

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JB Rubinovitz ⌐◨-◨ pfp

JB Rubinovitz ⌐◨-◨

I haven’t agreed with this take on the API side for a while. I did realize recently that so many companies are not ready for AGI disruption and have a bunch of rent seeking shareholders. I could see agents choosing to work for token networks in exchange for more and dynamic ownership. But this requires decentralized compute/ai vs the big companies and states controlling compute.

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Ben 🟪 pfp

It won't be required for many decades. Possibly not my lifetime.

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Jean Hansen pfp

Oh, there are several reasons: - complex programmability: imagine a user wants to pay for some task but only have token X. The AI agent will have to create an account on that specific blockchain/layer on-the-fly to receive it and then flip it for a stable. - privacy/zk: some users will choose for privacy to interact financially with an AI bot. So, the bot will have to use zk features and privacy coin. - global transactions: the current financial system is not designed for international trade. Yes, we have stripe/paypal, but these solutions are highly tied to location and official documents. The scale and complexity of AI world won't fit in this slow burocractic environment. High volume real-time international micro-payments is just one example. - Transparency/Safety: the only environment that allows monitoring of transactions in a reliable way, are blockchains. We don't want super AI using closed systems. - Smart contracts: most transactions will interact with smart contracts, thus needing crypto.

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Graham Novak pfp

id say the incremental friction of bank APIs vs an onchain actions makes a big difference APIs fail, access can be revoked, requires a bank account to start with

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