SAN FRANCISCO, CA – As artificial intelligence advances, some crypto executives believe it could become the force that finally pushes blockchain infrastructure into widespread use. Others aren’t convinced the jump is so simple.
During a recent panel discussion at NEARCON 2026, Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, described AI as “an unstoppable freight train,” arguing that its pace of development is unlike anything crypto has seen. “AI is currently doing a quarter of a roadmap every two weeks,” he said, suggesting that projections based on previous crypto adoption cycles may already be outdated. “You have to delete the data from the last six years and delete it from the last six months. »
For Horsley, this implies that public blockchains could benefit disproportionately from the rise of AI. “If there is one space that will fully benefit from the proliferation of AI adoption, it will be public blockchains and crypto assets,” he said.
As autonomous agents begin to act on behalf of users, he suggested, cryptonative tools could offer practical benefits. “Agents, obviously you’re not going to want to authorize OpenClaw with your credit card… You’re going to want to fund them with stablecoins. They’re going to want to transact confidentially,” Horsley said, pointing to stablecoins and on-chain infrastructure as potential guardrails for machine-driven activities.
Diogo Monica, general partner at Haun Ventures and co-founder of Anchorage Digital, pushed back against the assumption that agent commerce automatically requires new rails.
“It is possible that the agent payments business will look exactly like the current payments business for the foreseeable future,” Monica said. “You’re telling me that a superhuman intelligence cannot use today’s payment lanes, today’s credit cards, today’s instant settlement, to pay for things and fend for itself.”
“You can’t tell me AGI is coming and the agents will be super smart…and tell me they won’t be smart enough to understand different systems,” he added.
Monica nevertheless recognized a deeper alignment between the technologies. “AI creates digital abundance and crypto versus digital scarcity. They are actually complementary technologies,” he said, adding that privacy and crypto verification tools could help mitigate some of the risks introduced by AI.
The question of whether blockchains will become the default rails of autonomous commerce remains unanswered. But as AI accelerates, the debate over crypto’s role in this future is clearly intensifying.
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