Decentralized finance is positioned to lead the rise of agentic trading, according to Max Bareiss, Head of Lending at Galaxy Digital. In comments made on November 9, 2026, Bareiss argued that software agents can borrow, trade, and repay onchain without a human counterparty approving each step—a process that traditional finance, with its phone calls, credit desks, and business hours, was not designed to accommodate.
Why agents and DeFi fit together
Agentic trading refers to autonomous, AI-driven trading carried out by software agents. Bareiss pointed to a specific set of capabilities: agents can borrow assets, execute trades, short positions, and handle repayments without human oversight.
The fit stems from how DeFi lending is structured. Liquidation thresholds are set in advance and coded into the protocol, and liquidity sits onchain, available to anyone who meets the collateral rules. By contrast, a traditional prime brokerage relationship typically involves a human approving terms and making margin calls—a bottleneck for an AI agent that operates continuously.
Galaxy's own onchain playbook
Bareiss's comments are grounded in Galaxy Digital's own use of DeFi platforms. The firm has used Aave since at least September 2025, borrowing stablecoins against high-value collateral such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Galaxy's DeFi integration now supports its treasury, trading, and structured product functions, providing round-the-clock access to liquidity and reducing dependence on traditional intermediaries.
The timing aligns with a busy period for the firm. Galaxy recently made a $100 million allocation into the Sky ecosystem, announced around November 6, 2026. A day earlier, on November 5, 2026, the firm's Galaxy Onchain Financing Rate (GOFR) was providing institutional access to onchain capital markets. GOFR aggregates borrowing rates across multiple platforms, including Aave, Morpho, and Spark. Galaxy also offers institutional clients first-loss capital protection and advanced execution services within onchain money markets.
What this means for institutions and DeFi
For investors, the immediate takeaway concerns where automated trading activity could concentrate. DeFi offers programmable leverage and atomic settlement, meaning a trade and its settlement happen together or not at all.
There is also a competitive angle: Galaxy is building several pieces at once—a rate benchmark in GOFR, a sizable Sky allocation, and first-loss protection for clients.
The risks deserve equal attention. Agents that borrow and trade without human oversight depend entirely on how well their parameters are set. Pre-set liquidation thresholds are a feature when they work and an accelerant when many automated positions hit them at once.
What to watch from here: adoption of GOFR as a reference rate across Aave, Morpho, and Spark, the deployment of Galaxy's Sky allocation, and whether other institutional lenders start describing AI agents as clients rather than tools.
