AI Agents Could Make Crypto the Internet’s Machine Money

AI agents could become one of the biggest drivers of cryptocurrency adoption as autonomous software increasingly handles payments, commerce and everyday online tasks.

Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman Yat Siu estimates that 50 billion to 100 billion AI agents could be transacting across the internet within the next few years. He expects an increasingly “agentic” web in which software independently manages activities such as bookings, payments, scheduling and shopping for users.

Animoca has already positioned itself for this shift. The company pivoted toward an AI-powered metaverse in May and launched an investment program worth up to $10 million for developers building applications on Minds, its persistent AI agent platform.

A critical question is what currency these autonomous agents will use. Siu believes cryptocurrency wallets offer a natural solution because conventional banking systems generally require human identity verification. Crypto could allow AI agents to hold and transfer value without needing traditional bank accounts, effectively creating a machine-native financial system.

OKX Europe CEO Erald Ghoos similarly expects AI agents to rely on digital assets rather than fiat currencies. However, he predicts the market could eventually converge around a single “super currency,” potentially a stablecoin or another crypto asset designed specifically for machine-to-machine transactions.

Siu sees a different possibility. Instead of one dominant AI currency, agents could automatically transact using thousands of cryptocurrencies and tokens, handling conversions and payment decisions without requiring users to understand the underlying assets.

Geopolitics could complicate the emergence of a universal stablecoin. Ghoos questioned whether Chinese AI systems would embrace a U.S. dollar-pegged token or whether American markets would accept a yuan-based alternative. A politically neutral digital currency could therefore become more practical for global AI commerce.

Major hurdles remain. Citi payments executive Debo Sen said standards around identity, authorization and trust must improve before autonomous payments can scale, particularly for high-value business transactions.

The opportunity is substantial. Juniper Research forecasts global agentic commerce could reach $1.5 trillion by 2030. Coinbase international executive Keith Grose said the unresolved issue is who ultimately controls the payment rails—or whether AI transactions will operate through shared, permissionless networks.