The growing deployment of artificial intelligence raises a consequential question for investors: what financial infrastructure will support an economy increasingly driven by autonomous software agents?
According to Utkarsh Ahuja, founder and managing partner of Moon Pursuit Capital, blockchain and digital assets are likely to play a central role. Ahuja argues that as AI agents become capable of negotiating with other agents, purchasing computing resources, and executing transactions autonomously, traditional payment systems designed around human-initiated transfers will prove inadequate.
Traditional infrastructure was built for people and institutions to initiate transactions, not for potentially millions of autonomous software agents conducting low-value transactions continuously across borders, Ahuja wrote in analysis published in the institutional newsletter Crypto Long & Short. Blockchain infrastructure is suited to this environment because money can become programmable, allowing AI agents to interact with wallets, execute smart contracts, and transfer stablecoins without manual intervention layers required by traditional financial systems.
Stablecoins are particularly significant in this context, as they provide a bridge between blockchain programmability and familiar units of account, Ahuja noted.
Infrastructure Beyond Applications
Ahuja argues that the investment opportunity extends beyond companies building AI models and applications. If AI creates substantially more machine-to-machine economic activity, demand will emerge for infrastructure enabling machines to transact, verify identity, establish ownership, and exchange value.
Blockchain systems can provide verifiable, shared records relevant to identity verification and provenance—determining who or what is behind a transaction and what an agent is authorized to do. These capabilities become increasingly important as autonomous systems consume data, create intellectual property, and execute transactions.
Convergence of Trends
Tokenization is already moving traditional assets onto blockchain systems, while stablecoins have demonstrated that meaningful financial activity can operate on-chain. Meanwhile, AI is automating financial decision-making. These developments are currently separate but could converge significantly, according to Ahuja's analysis.
Investors should focus on infrastructure solving genuine problems created by greater automation: payments, settlement, identity, cybersecurity, custody, and systems connecting traditional and digital markets, Ahuja recommended.
Market Developments
The week saw traditional finance integrating with crypto infrastructure. Goldman Sachs routed approximately $100 billion in Treasury funds to digital-asset trading firms through Lynq, a settlement network for digital-asset companies, without tokenization. Cboe Global Markets and S&P Dow Jones Indices extended a licensing agreement that leaves room to explore tokenized options products.
Bitcoin recovered above $84,000 following a Monday dip to $82,500, as 10-year Treasury yields settled after briefly reaching 5.2%. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds received $30 million on Tuesday.
