Crypto Long & Short: What will the AI agents run on?
The newsletter makes a case for blockchain and digital assets serving as the foundation for an economy driven by autonomous AI agents. Its logic rests on the fact that traditional payment systems were built with people and institutions doing the initiating of transactions. Those systems were never constructed to handle potentially millions of autonomous software agents making low-value transactions continuously across borders.
The Argument From Moon Pursuit Capital
Utkarsh Ahuja, founder and managing partner of Moon Pursuit Capital, argues that the talk about artificial intelligence keeps coming back to the same question: which companies will win. Investors are working to spot the next big model, application or AI platform. He believes, though, that a different investment question is worth more consideration.
“If AI becomes as economically important as markets expect, what financial infrastructure will that economy actually run on?” he asks. His answer involves blockchain and digital assets.
He does not argue that every AI company needs a token, nor that attaching “AI” to a crypto project creates value. Instead, he points to the infrastructure underneath both sectors, where autonomous software begins interacting with financial systems and needs infrastructure capable of moving value as quickly and programmatically as it moves information.
How Blockchain Infrastructure Works Here
A digital helper can carry out tasks involving a wallet, run a smart contract, or move a stablecoin without needing the same levels of human oversight tied to older banking systems. Stablecoins stand out because they serve as a link between the programmable nature of blockchain and a unit of value people already know.
Tokenization has already brought traditional assets onto blockchain rails, and stablecoins have shown that real financial activity can run onchain. AI is pushing financial decision-making toward automation, and these two trends are moving independently for now. Combined, they could matter a great deal.
The Identity Problem
When machines acting on their own become more capable, the market will need means to discover who or what stands behind a transaction and what an agent has permission to do. Provenance faces the same demand. As AI systems take in data, produce intellectual property or carry out transactions, it grows ever more essential to trace where information originated and to establish who holds the rights to it.
While blockchains cannot address every facet of these issues, their capacity to offer verifiable, shared records positions them as a natural component of the infrastructure layer.
The Convergence Warning
Not every project tied to AI and crypto merits a higher price tag. In past crypto cycles, stories beat underlying performance, and that danger persists around AI today.
Greater automation has produced real problems in infrastructure, and Ahuja is looking to address them: payments, settlement, identity, cybersecurity, custody and the rails connecting traditional and digital markets.
This Week’s Headlines
This week’s main story centers on conventional finance embedding itself within crypto infrastructure, with activity coming from both sides. Goldman Sachs sent a roughly $100 billion Treasury fund to digital-asset trading firms without turning it into tokens, while Cboe Global Markets and S&P Dow Jones Indices kept their licensing agreement open for exploring tokenized options.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Goldman Sachs | Routed roughly $100 billion Treasury fund to digital-asset trading firms |
| Cboe Global Markets | Left room to explore tokenized options under extended licensing agreement |
The closing note points out that the internet transformed the flow of information, and blockchain altered the movement of value. Now AI is shifting who, or increasingly what, makes economic choices. The newsletter argues investors ought to watch far more closely where those three changes meet.
Source material: “Crypto Long & Short: What will the AI agents run on?,” CoinDesk.
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