HONG KONG — Crypto finds new niche as payment tool of choice for machines, Bitcoin not yet at rock bottom, US regulatory changes and the role of prediction markets were some of the topics discussed at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Hong Kong this week.
“As AI agents become capable of making and executing decisions independently, we may begin to see the first forms of what some call the machine economy, in which AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services, and transact with each other on-chain,” Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said.
These tools can be used to automatically book hotels and flights or make other purchases, Binance CEO Richard Teng said during a fireside chat on Thursday.
“If you think about agentic AI, so booking hotels, booking flights, what purchases you would make, how you think those purchases will be made, it will be through crypto and stablecoins,” he said. “So crypto is the currency of AI, if you think about it, and that’s how it’s going to be.”
Other participants discussed market volatility. Bitcoin has already fallen almost $30,000 in a month, and some industry observers fear it could fall further before hitting a bottom. Market participants are eyeing $50,000 as a level to watch, several people told CoinDesk.
Likewise, sentiment around betting markets is starting to turn negative. Traders said they feared platforms would suck liquidity from “productive sectors” and in turn cause a “negative wealth effect”.
On the regulatory front, although announcements from Hong Kong policymakers have taken center stage, industry participants told CoinDesk that they are closely watching U.S. lawmakers and negotiations around crypto market structure legislation.
One person said the U.S. market is large enough to have outsized influence over other regions, and so some regulators are waiting to see how the U.S. lands before making crypto policy decisions.
Hong Kong does not appear to be one of these jurisdictions. The Securities and Futures Commission is moving forward with various proposals aimed at bringing crypto companies further into the regulatory sphere.
