HONG KONG – Cryptocurrencies find a new niche as a preferred payment tool for machines: bitcoin Not yet at bottom, regulatory changes in the US and the role of prediction markets were among the topics discussed at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference this week.
“As AI agents become capable of making and executing decisions independently, we may begin to see the first forms of what some call the machine economy, where AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services, and transact with each other on-chain,” said Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po.
These tools can be used to automatically book hotels and flights or make other purchases, Binance CEO Richard Teng said during a fireside chat on Thursday.
“If you think about agent AI, meaning booking hotels, flights, any purchases you make, how you think those purchases will be made, it will be through cryptocurrencies and stablecoins,” he said. “So if you think about it, cryptocurrencies are the currency for AI, and that’s how it’s going to turn out.”
Other participants discussed market volatility. Bitcoin has already fallen nearly $30,000 in a month, and some industry observers fear it could fall even further before bottoming out. Market participants consider $50,000 to be a level to watch, several people told CoinDesk.
Likewise, sentiment around the betting markets is starting to turn negative. Traders said they were concerned that platforms could absorb liquidity from “productive sectors” and in turn cause a “negative wealth effect.”
On the regulatory front, although announcements from Hong Kong policymakers took center stage, industry participants told CoinDesk that they were closely watching US lawmakers and negotiations over crypto market structure legislation.
One person said the U.S. market is big enough to have enormous influence elsewhere, so some regulators are waiting to see how the U.S. lands before taking on cryptocurrency policymaking.
Hong Kong does not appear to be one of these jurisdictions. The Securities and Futures Commission is moving forward with several proposals to bring crypto companies further into the regulatory sphere.
