AI needs cryptocurrency, not traditional finance

Author: Liu Honglin

In the past few years, AI technology has made rapid progress. Large models, intelligent agents, and automated systems have emerged one after another. From content generation to code writing, from intelligent customer service to algorithmic trading, AI has gradually moved from a "tool" to an "actor". At the same time, the Web3 field has also begun to discuss the possibility of "AI + blockchain": using AI to optimize smart contracts, improve risk control accuracy, assist on-chain analysis, and so on.

But few people think about it the other way around: Does AI itself need blockchain?

If we regard AI as a participant that is gradually out of human control and has the ability to act autonomously, it will be almost impossible for it to move forward in the current financial system. This is not an efficiency issue, but a structural issue. The traditional financial system was not designed for machines from the beginning.

The financial system is designed for “people”, but AI is not “people”

The account system is the foundation of the modern financial system. Whether you want to open a bank card, buy a fund, or use a payment service, you cannot avoid a prerequisite: identity authentication. You have to submit your ID card, proof of address, phone number, and even need to record a face-to-face video to complete the KYC review. The core purpose of these processes is to make the system believe that you are a specific, identifiable, and legally responsible "natural person" or "legal person."

But AI does not fall into either of these categories. It has no nationality, no ID card, no tax number, and no "signing capacity" or "legal capacity." AI cannot open a bank account, register a company, or independently become a counterparty to a contract or a transaction object. This means it cannot receive money, make payments, or hold assets. To sum it up in one sentence: AI is a "non-human ghost" in the existing financial system and has no financial personality.

This is not a philosophical question, but a real system boundary.

If you ask an AI agent to buy the right to use a server, call an API, or even participate in transactions in the secondary market, it must first have a means of payment. And any compliant means of payment is tied to a "person" or "enterprise". As long as AI is not "someone's subsidiary tool" but a relatively independent actor, it is destined to be "rejected" from this structure.

Blockchain provides machine-accessible financial protocols

The biggest difference between the blockchain system and the traditional financial system is that it doesn’t care who you are. You can be a person, a script, a program, or even an “always online” automated intelligent entity. As long as you can generate a pair of private keys and addresses, you can receive payments, make payments, sign smart contracts, and participate in consensus mechanisms on the chain.

In other words, blockchain is naturally suitable for "non-human users" to participate in economic activities.

For example, an AI model deployed on a blockchain uses decentralized storage (such as Arweave) to obtain data, and then uses a decentralized computing power market (such as Akash) to obtain operating resources. After completing the task, it receives payment through a smart contract (settled in stablecoins). This entire process does not require a centralized platform to match, bank card verification, or any "human" intervention.

This may sound like a futuristic science fiction novel, but in fact, it has already been realized in some projects. Projects such as Fetch.AI, Autonolas, and SingularityNET are exploring how AI Agents can have an "economic identity" on the chain, how to provide services to other Agents, and how to complete transactions and coordination autonomously. This "machine-to-machine (M2M)" economic form has entered the practical testing stage from the concept.

AI is no longer a model that relies on humans to feed it, but a cycle that can obtain resources, provide services, obtain income, and reinvest itself. It does not need humans to issue payroll, but has its own source of income on the chain.

Why can't the traditional financial system adapt to this scenario?

Because its entire infrastructure is designed around the assumption of "human behavior".

The transaction process in the traditional payment system is initiated, approved, and supervised by someone. The clearing process relies on trust and regulatory coordination between banks. The risk control logic focuses on "who" is doing what, not "whether the program is stable." It is difficult to imagine an AI wallet opening a bank account through facial recognition, nor can you expect an AI model to complete tax declarations to regulatory authorities.

This means that all transactions related to "non-human users" in the traditional financial system need to be "affiliated" with a person or company to operate. This is not only inefficient, but more importantly, there are huge liability risks: who is responsible when AI causes losses? When it makes a profit, how is the tax collected? There are no answers to these questions today, but on the chain, at least we have the technical possibility.

Stablecoins: Hard Currency in the AI World

Many people think that AI needs “payment ability”, but in fact, AI needs a stable settlement currency. Imagine that when an AI Agent calls another model or purchases a data API service, it would rather exchange it in a “stable value unit” rather than a highly volatile encrypted asset.

This is the significance of stablecoins. USDT, USDC or future compliant RMB stablecoins provide a financial tool that can circulate freely on the chain while maintaining stable value, and is the "hard currency" in the AI world.

Currently, some projects are trying to settle service calls between AIs in real time through stablecoins, thus forming a low-friction economic system that does not require "human approval". With the improvement of on-chain stablecoin liquidity, AI can directly earn revenue from tasks, and then use these revenues to purchase new service modules or operating resources, forming a truly autonomous machine economy.

Going one step further: The “on-chain legal person” form of AI?

We can even foresee that in the future some AI systems will no longer be attached to a certain company or research institution, but will exist in the form of DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) or on-chain protocols.

These AI Agents will have their own funding pool, community governance mechanism and on-chain identity system. They do not need legal registration or filing in a certain country, but they can serve users, receive payments, initiate lawsuits, and publish agreement updates, forming a true "digital legal person" or "AI legal person".

The cooperation and game between them will be based on smart contracts, with cryptocurrency as the medium and on-chain rules as the order. There may be no emotions between them, but there are incentives; there are no rights and obligations, but there is code execution.

In this process, cryptocurrency is not some kind of speculative asset, but the underlying protocol of trust between AIs.

Risks and challenges: We are far from ready

Of course, all this is not without its challenges.

The key custody issues of AI wallets, the economic losses caused by model abuse, the verifiability of on-chain identities, the legal eligibility of cross-border AI entities, and the ethical boundaries of algorithmic behavior are all new challenges that must be faced.

More realistically, our existing legal system and regulatory framework provide almost no path for "non-human actors". AI cannot sue others, nor can it be sued; it cannot pay taxes, nor can it enjoy property rights; once it loses control or is attacked, who will be responsible and who will be held accountable? All of this requires a new legal framework, social consensus and technical governance means to deal with it.

But at least, we have seen the path in some pioneering projects - it does not rely on patching old systems to accommodate AI, but rather on building a more adaptable "machine financial infrastructure" to undertake AI behavior.

This infrastructure requires on-chain identities, encrypted accounts, stablecoin payments, smart contract collaboration, and a decentralized credit mechanism. In other words, it requires not the traditional “financial system” but Web3.

Last words

In the early days of cryptocurrency development, it served “people without accounts”, such as people, countries, and marginal industries that were excluded from the financial system. Now, it may become the only option for “machines without identity” to participate in economic activities.

If traditional finance is a pyramid built for human society, then blockchain and cryptocurrency may be building a "financial foundation for machines."

AI does not necessarily have to have rights, but it must have an operational economic interface. This is exactly the problem that blockchain is best at solving.