AI needs cryptocurrency, not traditional finance
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AI needs cryptocurrency, not traditional finance
AI doesn't necessarily need to have rights, but it must have an operational economic interface.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Liu Honglin
In recent years, AI technology has advanced rapidly. Large models, intelligent agents, and automated systems have emerged one after another—generating content, writing code, powering customer service, enabling algorithmic trading. AI is gradually evolving from a mere "tool" into an autonomous "actor." At the same time, the Web3 space has begun actively discussing the potential of "AI + blockchain": using AI to optimize smart contracts, enhance risk control precision, assist on-chain analysis, and more.
But few people ask the reverse question: Does AI itself need blockchain?
If we view AI as an entity gradually脱离 human control and gaining independent agency, it is nearly impossible for it to function within today's financial system. This isn't a matter of efficiency—it's a structural issue. Traditional finance was never designed for machines.
The Financial System Was Built for "Humans," but AI Is Not Human
Account systems form the foundation of modern finance. Whether opening a bank card, purchasing a fund, or using payment services, one prerequisite remains constant: identity verification. You must submit ID documents, proof of address, phone numbers, and sometimes even complete KYC via face-to-face video. The core purpose of these processes is to establish that you are a specific, identifiable individual or legal entity with legal responsibility.
AI falls outside both categories. It has no nationality, no ID number, no tax ID, and lacks "signature capacity" or "legal capacity." AI cannot open bank accounts, register companies, or independently serve as a contracting party or transaction counterparty. This means it cannot receive payments, make payments, or hold assets. In short: within the current financial system, AI is a "non-human ghost"—it has no financial identity.
This isn't philosophical—it's a real systemic boundary.
If you instruct an AI agent to purchase server usage rights, invoke an API, or trade in secondary markets, it first needs a payment method. Yet every compliant payment mechanism is tied to a "person" or "company." As long as AI isn't merely a subordinate tool of humans, but an independent actor, it will be structurally excluded.
Blockchain Offers Financial Protocols Accessible to Machines
The key difference between blockchain and traditional finance is that blockchain doesn’t care who you are. You can be a person, a script, a program, or a perpetually online intelligent agent. So long as you can generate a private key and address, you can receive funds, make payments, sign smart contracts, and participate in consensus mechanisms on-chain.
In other words, blockchain is inherently suited for "non-human users" to engage in economic activity.
For example, consider an AI model deployed on a blockchain that retrieves data from decentralized storage (e.g., Arweave), uses decentralized compute markets (e.g., Akash) for processing power, and receives stablecoin-denominated compensation via smart contracts upon task completion. This entire process requires no centralized platform, no bank verification, and no human intervention.
This may sound like science fiction, but early versions are already being tested in projects such as Fetch.AI, Autonolas, and SingularityNET. These initiatives are exploring how AI agents can acquire "economic identities" on-chain, provide services to other agents, and autonomously conduct transactions and coordination. This "machine-to-machine (M2M)" economy has moved from concept to practical experimentation.
AI is no longer just a model dependent on human provisioning. It becomes a self-sustaining cycle capable of acquiring resources, delivering services, earning income, and reinvesting in itself. It doesn't rely on human-issued paychecks—it earns revenue directly on-chain.
Why Can't Traditional Finance Adapt to This Scenario?
Because its entire infrastructure is built on assumptions about human behavior.
Traditional payment flows require human initiation, approval, and oversight. Settlement depends on trust between banks and regulatory coordination. Risk controls focus on "who" is doing what—not whether "the program is stable." It's hard to imagine an AI wallet opening a bank account via facial recognition, or an AI model filing tax reports with regulators.
This forces all transactions involving "non-human users" in traditional finance to be routed through a human or corporate entity. This is not only inefficient but introduces significant liability risks: Who bears responsibility when AI causes losses? How are taxes collected on AI-generated profits? These questions remain unanswered. On-chain, at least, we now have technical possibilities.
Stablecoins: The Hard Currency of the AI World
Many assume AI simply needs "payment capability," but what AI truly needs is a stable settlement currency. Imagine an AI agent invoking another model or purchasing a data API service—it would prefer to transact in a "stable value unit," not highly volatile crypto assets.
This is where stablecoins become critical. USDT, USDC, or future regulated RMB-backed stablecoins offer financial instruments that are both freely transferable on-chain and value-stable—serving as the "hard currency" of the AI world.
Some projects are already experimenting with real-time stablecoin settlements between AI services, creating low-friction economic systems that operate without human approval. As on-chain stablecoin liquidity grows, AI can earn income directly from tasks and use those earnings to purchase new service modules or computing resources—forming a truly autonomous machine economy.
Taking It Further: Could AI Become an "On-Chain Legal Entity"?
We might even envision a future where certain AI systems no longer belong to any company or research institute, but instead exist as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) or on-chain protocols.
These AI agents could have their own treasury pools, community governance mechanisms, and on-chain identity systems. They wouldn’t require formal registration or national备案, yet could serve users, receive payments, initiate disputes, and deploy protocol updates—becoming true "digital legal entities" or "AI legal persons."
Their cooperation and competition would be based on smart contracts, mediated by cryptocurrency, and governed by on-chain rules. They may lack emotions, but they respond to incentives; they may lack rights and obligations in the traditional sense, but they execute code.
In this context, cryptocurrency ceases to be merely a speculative asset—it becomes the underlying protocol of trust between AIs.
Risks and Challenges: We’re Nowhere Near Ready
Of course, there are major challenges ahead.
Private key custody for AI wallets, economic damage caused by model misuse, verifiability of on-chain identities, legal standing of cross-border AI entities, and ethical boundaries of algorithmic behavior—all are new and pressing issues.
More realistically, our current legal and regulatory frameworks offer almost no pathways for "non-human actors." AI cannot sue others, nor be sued; cannot pay taxes, nor own property. If it goes rogue or gets hacked, who is responsible? Who is held accountable? Addressing these questions demands new legal architectures, social consensus, and technological governance mechanisms.
Yet at least we’re beginning to see viable paths in pioneering projects—not by patching old systems to accommodate AI, but by building a new, better-suited "financial infrastructure for machines."
This infrastructure requires on-chain identity, cryptographic accounts, stablecoin payments, smart contract collaboration, and decentralized trust mechanisms. In other words, it doesn’t require the traditional financial system—we need Web3.
Final Thoughts
The early development of cryptocurrency served "the unbanked"—people, nations, and marginalized industries excluded from the financial system. Today, it may become the only option for "identity-less machines" to participate in economic activity.
If traditional finance is a pyramid built for human society, then blockchain and cryptocurrency may be laying the very "financial foundation for machines."
AI doesn’t necessarily need legal rights—but it does need operational economic interfaces. And this, precisely, is where blockchain excels.
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