Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says a new class of economic actors may soon be moving money at a scale humans never could.
In a new interview with billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, CZ says it is inevitable that AI agents will be a major participant in the economy, buying goods and services using crypto as their payment rails.
“I think it’s fairly straightforward. I think it’s very clear, soon we’re going to, each of us is going to have hundreds or thousands or millions of agents working for us in the background. They will be transacting, they will be moving money around. In theory, if I want to listen to this podcast, people should pay a few cents to listen to it. Whatever economic model you want.”
Zhao points to early examples that are not fully mature yet, but already visible.
“Even last year, we talked about agents buying tickets for us. It’s not quite there yet, but you will get there. They will book restaurants. They’ll pay for hotels for us.”
CZ highlights that AI agents don’t have an identity, forcing them to use digital assets like stablecoins that can operate autonomously, at high frequency and without human identity checks at every step.
“And then the agents can transact a million times more than us. And they are not going to use banks… It can’t do a KYC (know-your-customer). They can’t swipe a card.”
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire echoes CZ’s view that AI agents will leverage crypto for online transactions. According to Allaire, ‘literally billions’ of AI agents will swarm the internet, and they will need a new financial and payment system to conduct economic activity across the world 24/7.
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