SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Crypto isn’t just about building faster payment rails. Perhaps it’s about building a financial system for non-humans.
As AI agents become more autonomous, developers are already offering them crypto wallets, allowing software to hold assets, pay for services, trade tokens, and even hire other agents. The technical elements are being put in place. The legal ones are not.
During a recent panel at NEARCON 2026, Avical Garg of Electric Capital called this moment historically significant.
“What happens if there is no human behind this? » » asked Garg. “It’s a piece of code that has a wallet, that runs code to make more money… How does accountability work in that case? Actually, I don’t know.”
Crypto makes this possible in a way that traditional finance cannot. Blockchains enable programmable money, instant settlement and global access. Pair that with AI agents that can make decisions and you get something new: software that can both think and transact.
Garg likened the move to the creation of the limited liability company in the 19th century – a legal advancement that allowed the pooling of capital and growth on an industrial scale.
“So far, the cost of participating in the economy has gone down,” he said. “You’re talking about anyone in the world, with relatively little money, being able to create value.”
But the application remains pending.
“You can’t punish an AI,” Garg noted. “You can turn them off, but they don’t care.”
If autonomous agents begin trading, lending, hiring and growing businesses online, lawmakers could face a fundamental question: Who is responsible when software with its own wallet acts independently?
Read more: Kraken Co-CEO Could Trust AI With 100% of His Crypto – Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi Isn’t Convinced
