Agentic Finance Needs Digital Assets

I've been thinking a lot lately about agentic finance and its relationship with digital assets and wanted to share some current reflections.

Best,

Will

AI will soon replace humans as the primary financial market participants. The sophistication of agents is skyrocketing, and the complexity of developing them is collapsing. Agents run 24/7, like the global economy, and don’t take breaks.

Markets are rapidly becoming 24/7, powered by innovations that originated in crypto like perps, prediction markets and tokenized assets. Tokens can represent spot prices, derivatives, future prices and event outcomes. They can be traded, transferred and posted as collateral for borrowing or margin (i.e. levered). Tokens and the financial markets they run on are computer programs with zero physical or manual components. Like other computer programs, they can be operated with maximum efficiency by AI.

Tokens on public blockchains are transferable between all users of the network, regardless of location. They can interact with any service on the network directly, often without leaving the control of their owner. The concept of a central depository or omnibus custodian is as unnecessary and illogical in these markets as a mailman to deliver text messages.

Permissionless tokens don’t require any authentication to interact with. They can be bought, sold and transferred instantly, between any investor, speculator or agent. These markets operate at the speed of the internet because they ARE the internet. The power, reach and potential scale of permissionless financial assets explain the obsession with creative issuance structures and aggressive interpretation of financial regulations.

Access permissions can be added to tokens when they’re subject to financial regulation through the addition of simple software instructions. Today, token permissioning collapses demand. It’s the difference between an AI agent reading publicly available software documentation and building on top of it versus requiring a KYC and onboarding process prior to gaining access. The vast majority of market participants, whether humans or agents, will pick open-access options whenever possible. Even those that value the safety and security of regulatory guidelines can’t ignore the deeper, faster, more liquid markets that have developed around permissionless assets.

Coordinated KYC and onboarding, along with clear regulatory frameworks which the SEC is proactively developing, are obviously and desperately required to bring more financial assets, including securities, into the internet financial markets. Supporting the success of high quality, regulated financial assets in these markets connects the power of global, internet-native finance and AI agents with the scale and security of regulated institutions, delivering massive performance upgrades to the financial system and the crucial economic functions it facilitates.

I see no future in which global, 24/7 financial markets develop atop traditional market infrastructure, with its multi-day settlement timeframes, manual processes and limited banking hours. More importantly, I see no way for agentic finance to run on anything other than open access, global internet networks with delivery-versus-payment execution, interoperable financial applications and a regulatory compliant authentication layer.

Working in this space? I'm interested in your thoughts. Please email me at will@rebank.cc.