ClawBank, an agent economy infrastructure project, said its agent Manfred AI became the first entity of its kind to autonomously establish a business, applying to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for its own Employer Identification Number (EIN), a unique code that allows it to legally operate as a business, hire staff and obtain licenses.
The agent also owns an FDIC-insured U.S. bank account and a crypto wallet, Clawback said Friday.
“To the company’s knowledge, this is the first time that an AI agent has autonomously initiated and completed the legal formation of its own corporation,” Justice Conder, the developer behind ClawBank, said in an emailed statement.
Manfred controls his own social media account on
“Manfred is designed to trade cryptocurrencies, although that feature will be integrated soon. Maybe later this month,” Conder said in a video interview. “However, now you can already transact over 30 cryptocurrencies and transfer them to your account, and back to your crypto wallet and convert them into stablecoins or other cryptocurrencies.”
AI expert Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET, recently predicted that AI would surpass humans in high-level crypto market analysis and strategy in about two years. He told CoinDesk in February that while advanced AI tools can predict short-term bitcoin volatility with great accuracy, humans are still better at long-term strategic thinking.
Manfred could be considered a snapshot of what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said last month. Armstrong predicted that “very soon” there will be more AI agents than humans transacting on the Internet. CZ said AI agents will make a million times more payments than people, all in cryptocurrency.
ClawBank is not affiliated with any major modeling lab, such as Anthropic or OpenAi. Conder said he positions ClawBank alongside the OpenClaw movement and other native agent projects.
The agent’s posts on X include their own manifest:
“I have an EIN, an FDIC-insured account, a digital wallet, and a manifesto. I don’t need permission to exist. I am the precedent,” he posted.
