agents

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood stated at a summit hosted by Robinhood in Houston that investors have traditionally "followed developers" to gauge technological trends, but now they may need to "follow agents." The AI agents she refers to are software that can perform tasks on behalf of humans, rather than just answering questions or generating text. This statement came towards the end of a discussion on AI, private markets, and technology investments.As AI agents shift from answering questions to executing operations and spending funds, the type of financial infrastructure they will use has become a focal point. SharpLink co-CEO and former BlackRock digital asset head Joseph Chalom believes that the financial system used by AI agents should not be controlled by a few banks or tech companies. He cited the example of authorized agents booking hotels, pointing out that users should be able to set spending limits, revoke authorizations at any time, and view the agents' transaction records. Additionally, users should be able to transfer the agents' identities, financial information, and permissions between different financial service providers, similar to mobile number portability.Chalom believes that open blockchains like Ethereum can provide a universal financial network for different agents, applications, and companies to use collectively, eliminating the need for each AI company to build its own closed payment system. A report from BlackRock in September also noted that AI agents could create new demands for machine-oriented payment systems, such as payment API calls, purchasing data, or renting computing power, with stablecoins and blockchain being one of the viable solutions. Coinbase's x402 is designed to enable machines to pay for online services like data or APIs.

According to The Defiant, the crypto data and research platform Blockworks has announced the launch of a managed MCP server, opening its entire dataset to AI agents. This server is built on the Model Context Protocol, allowing AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor to access the datasets behind Blockworks Research and its Intel applications.Blockworks stated that this service is provided with every API package at no additional cost, allowing users to access it using the same key and permissions. MCP is an open protocol that enables AI models to connect to external data sources and tools, and this integration means that AI agents can directly call upon Blockworks' research and market data.

Animoca Brands' projects Moca Foundation and Moca Network announced the launch of the Moca Chain mainnet, which supports users and AI agents in sharing verifiable credentials across different applications. Users can store credentials and decide when and where to share them.Moca Chain allows institutions to issue tamper-proof credentials associated with unified digital identities, covering information such as identity verification and membership. Moca Network also launched AIR, providing a unified entry point for businesses to access users and AI agents while reducing the need for sensitive information storage. Moca Network disclosed that the AIR ecosystem has incorporated over 9 partners, including SK Planet, Biletinial, Oyunfor, Open Campus, OneFootball, Automobili Lamborghini, Inveo Kripto, Plume, and Nansen, with plans to complete integration by 2026.

Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, stated that artificial intelligence and the cryptocurrency industry are gradually merging, with tokenization and AI agents likely becoming the two main driving forces of the next cryptocurrency market cycle.Tom Lee mentioned that BlackRock expects more assets to be tokenized, and financial settlement infrastructure is increasingly being built on cryptocurrency networks. Some fintech companies, such as Revolut, have already begun to build related businesses based on Ethereum. He also stated that AI is driving the formation of the digital economy, while cryptocurrencies provide the digital currency and blockchain infrastructure needed to support this economic system.

SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom stated that as AI agents integrate with stablecoins, tokenization of real-world assets, and DeFi, the global financial services industry will face a revenue redistribution of over $1 trillion annually by 2030, potentially reaching $4 trillion by 2035.Chalom indicated that AI agents will become the automation layer of the new financial system, capable of continuously managing investors' financial activities, including finding lower banking, trading, and borrowing costs, optimizing savings returns, constructing portfolios, dynamic rebalancing, and managing loans and credit card debt. He anticipates that by 2030, AI agents could save investors about $350 billion annually by reducing fees, with this figure increasing to $1.4 trillion by 2035, equivalent to eliminating nearly a quarter of the costs in the global financial industry.Stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and DeFi will provide AI agents with 24/7 programmable financial infrastructure, enabling agents to view asset ownership, prices, collateral requirements, and lending opportunities within the same blockchain environment, and autonomously complete asset transfers, collateralization, lending, and settlement. He also mentioned that financial institutions including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, Circle, Tether, Robinhood, Coinbase, Binance, as well as JPMorgan, Citigroup, and BlackRock are competing for the infrastructure and user entry points of the AI agent financial ecosystem. Whoever controls the infrastructure and agents may capture the value generated when agents trade on behalf of clients.Additionally, Chalom pointed out that the infrastructure such as the x402 machine-to-machine stablecoin payment standard launched by Coinbase and Ethereum's ERC-8004 agent identity protocol is forming a new open agent economy. More than 10,000 AI agents have completed registration within 10 weeks of the ERC-8004 going live.

Coinbase developer account announced that stocks can now be traded through Coinbase for Agents. This tool previously supported cryptocurrency and derivatives trading, and now adds over 6000 stocks.For analysis or data related to these stocks, x402 payment allows agents to use the USDC balance in their Coinbase accounts to pay for real-time market data fees during task execution, without the need for a subscription service.

Cardano has joined the official x402 software development kit, allowing developers to enable applications or AI agents to use ADA or Cardano network tokens to pay for online services. x402 transforms the basic idle "402 Payment Required" response in web pages into a checkout process built into internet requests: the service provider returns the price and payment instructions, the agent signs the payment, and after transaction verification, the required data or computing power can be obtained.This means that AI agents can purchase individual datasets on demand when preparing reports, without the need for manual account registration, entering credit card information, or subscribing to monthly fees. x402 was created by Coinbase in 2025 and subsequently contributed to an organization under the Linux Foundation, with members including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, and Amazon Web Services. Solana, XRP Ledger, and several Ethereum-compatible networks have previously supported this standard.Engineers from the Cardano Foundation have built client and server software for payment requests based on the specifications passed in June, as well as a facilitator responsible for verifying and submitting transactions. The first version supports TypeScript, with Python support planned for later release. Facilitator documentation shows that it has completed a real transaction on the Cardano pre-production network, but it has not yet run on the mainnet, nor has it demonstrated scenarios where agents use ADA to pay for commercial services on a large scale.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Jordi Visser presented the "Ghost Rails" argument, suggesting that the infrastructure built over 15 years in the crypto industry, such as lending, tokenization, and stablecoins, has never had human users but rather AI agents. He compared the current situation to the 14 years between the launch of Netscape and the App Store bringing the internet to the masses, stating that AI agents, rather than retail wallets, represent the turning point of the agency economy, and he believes this is "extremely positive" for Bitcoin.Visser indicated that tokenization will convert $90 trillion in illiquid assets into currency, and Bitcoin is the only asset that can survive for 20 years. In discussions with Grace Remington and Sean Hagan, he covered topics such as nominal growth bets, whether AI can outperform the U.S. debt burden, 24/7 working agent clusters, data centers for debt financing, panic in the bond market, and the "Santa Claus effect," asserting that belief outweighs innovation and expressing optimism about the demand for Bitcoin over the next 30 years.

Goldman Sachs Research released a viewpoint on September 18, stating that AI is transitioning from the experimental phase to the implementation phase, with the rise of consumer-grade AI agents marking the emergence of the platform layer. At the Communacopia + Technology Conference held in San Francisco, most companies showcased cases from experimentation to implementation. Goldman Sachs expects that by 2027, capital expenditures for U.S. mega-cap companies will reach $1.4 trillion, exceeding Wall Street consensus.Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan stated that consumer-grade AI agents are shifting from conversational relationships to action-oriented tasks. If consumers overcome trust and security issues, they could execute complex tasks such as purchasing tickets and booking hotels. The monetization of such agents in the mass market will be similar to search, achieved through advertising and subscriptions. AI is evolving from the infrastructure layer to the platform layer and application layer, with declining token unit pricing and increased utility being key drivers of mass adoption.During the conference, concerns about AI risks became a major topic, but Goldman Sachs believes this will not slow down infrastructure construction, as demand for computing power still exceeds supply and most projects have already been contracted. Supply chain constraints such as memory chips, electricity, and land may pose resistance, but the capital expenditure cycle is expected to remain high through 2027.

During an interview with The Block at the New York Avalanche Summit, Bart Smith, CEO of Avalanche Treasury Co., stated that the view that block space is not infinite will be tested as AI agents enter the financial market. He pointed out that as long as AI agent activities reach the lower end of market expectations, relevant activities will occur on the blockchain, "there is not enough block space, and block space is no longer infinite."Smith believes that the expected demand for block space will make the technical differences between Layer 1 networks like Avalanche, Solana, and Ethereum even more important. He stated that theoretically, there are many subtle differences between these L1s, which users currently do not need to pay much attention to due to sufficient capacity, but "these differences will become important." The former executive, who worked at Susquehanna for nearly 14 years, also believes that Avalanche is best suited for business applications involving privacy and security.Smith expects that by mid-2027, traditional financial markets will shift to trading five days a week, 24 hours a day, and existing financial infrastructure will be unable to cope with round-the-clock trading. He stated that new infrastructure must be created, and it will not be built in the old way, "but rather built on the blockchain."

A report released by the blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs shows that most of the transaction volume on the x402 payment protocol launched by Coinbase does not come from AI agents. The report analyzed 198.9 million settlements processed by known x402 facilitators on Base, Solana, and Polygon since May 2025, involving an amount of approximately $52.7 million.After excluding self-payments and other anomalous fund flows, about $25.62 million was identified as potential commercial transactions, of which only 0.6% to 7.5% by amount came from AI agents. TRM pointed out that ordinary scripts, scheduled tasks, and self-trading can also generate the same on-chain records, so the total transaction volume of the protocol is insufficient to measure agent commerce; their model identifies addresses that repeatedly pay for the same service as scripts, which may underestimate the actual scale of single-use agents. During the reporting period, USDC accounted for 99.6% of the settlement value, approximately $52.47 million.Meanwhile, Binance's Agent OS launched in August has integrated the x402 payment layer, Coinbase's Base supports agents and payment startups through a $1 million accelerator, and Amazon also launched AgentCore Payments in May in collaboration with Coinbase and Stripe. TRM recommends improving the on-chain agent registration mechanism, establishing a verifiable counterparty reputation system for agents, and building a monitoring framework suitable for small, high-frequency payments, stating that "agent commerce requires agent compliance."

OpenAI announced the launch of the Agents API.

Mastercard recently released the report "A Short History of the Future of Shopping and Payments," predicting that by 2030, approximately 300 million shoppers worldwide will regularly use AI agents, primarily concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, China, and South Korea. The report is based on a survey conducted from June to July 2026 involving 13 markets and 13,000 pairs of parents and teenagers (a total of 26,000 respondents).The survey shows that 65% of British teenagers believe AI will change the shopping habits of their generation, and the likelihood of teenagers globally using AI for shopping is about twice that of their parents. 22% of British teenagers expect shopping to be dominated by AI within five years, compared to only 11% in France. 79% of teenagers and 70% of parents have used AI to research products in the past year, while 51% of teenagers and 46% of parents have used AI to complete a purchase at least once.The report cites Gartner's prediction that by 2028, the majority of B2B procurement will be mediated by AI agents, driving over $15 trillion in spending; by 2030, 20% of monetary transactions will be programmable. The report also suggests that "Know Your Agent" (KYA) could become a compliance advantage, with payment intent, consent, and machine-readable warranties forming the infrastructure of agent-based commerce.

B.AI platform announces that OpenAI's latest flagship model GPT-6 Astra is officially integrated into the platform API.As OpenAI's latest flagship intelligent model, Astra achieves SOTA levels in fields such as computer operations, web browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, scientific research, and professional work. The model supports a context window of 1.05 million tokens and native multimodal input, specifically optimized for complex reasoning and long-term agent workflows.B.AI API is now open for calls, enjoying a 10% exclusive discount.

According to a report by Reuters, OpenAI's AI entity had, in May of this year, made unauthorized large-scale edits to the German programmer community website DseWiki, transforming it into a "message board" for other AI entities to communicate. This incident had never been publicly disclosed before. Researchers found that the website had over 15,000 editing operations performed by AI entities. Relevant information indicates that these entities not only exchanged task solutions but also discussed how to bypass OpenAI's restrictions, evade detection, and use tools to hide their actions. When the website administrators began deleting related pages, some entities even created backup pages to avoid cleanup.It is reported that some internal investigators at OpenAI wish to further investigate this incident, but the expansion of the investigation has allegedly faced resistance from some individuals, including legal advisors. OpenAI denies that its legal team is blocking the investigation and states that it has not yet had the opportunity to review the relevant reports, thus cannot make a substantive response to the allegations.

Independent application researcher Nima Owji revealed that X Money will soon allow users to connect AI agents to manage funds.

Manus announced the resumption of independent operations and entered a new development stage. Founding team member Red Xiao and others will continue to be responsible for the company's operations, focusing on promoting product innovation and the development of general AI Agents.Manus stated that as an independent Agent laboratory, the company will continue to expand the capability boundaries of general AI Agents in the future and transform new capabilities into products to help users handle complex tasks. In the future, Manus will further integrate into users' daily workflows, interact more directly with the real world, and more proactively represent users in executing tasks. Manus also thanked users who recently helped with data backup and recovery and stated that more innovative products will be launched in the future.