SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Cryptocurrencies are not limited to building faster payment paths. He may be building the financial system for non-humans.
As AI agents become more autonomous, developers are already giving them crypto wallets, allowing the software to store assets, pay for services, exchange tokens, and even hire other agents. The technical pieces are falling into place. The legal ones are not.
On a recent panel at NEARCON 2026, Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg called the moment historically significant.
“What if there is no human being behind?” Garg asked. “It’s a piece of code that owns a wallet and runs code to make more money… How does liability work in that case? I don’t really know.”
Cryptocurrencies make this possible in a way that traditional finance cannot. Blockchains enable programmable money, instant settlement, and global access. Combine that with AI agents capable of making decisions and you have something new: software that can think and transact.
Garg compared the change to the creation of the limited liability company in the 19th century: a legal breakthrough that unlocked pooled capital and industrial-scale growth.
“The cost of participating in the economy has gone down so far,” he said. “We are talking about how anyone in the world, with relatively little money, can create value.”
But law enforcement remains unresolved.
“You can’t punish an AI,” Garg said. “You can turn them off, but they don’t care.”
If autonomous agents begin trading, lending, contracting and expanding on-chain businesses, policymakers may 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 is not convinced
