NFTs must be “reborn” as AI agents force the internet to solve new problems of identity and trust, Reid Hoffman said at CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Wednesday.
The Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder said agents transacting with other agents will need trusted digital identity systems that resemble what NFTs originally tried to solve. Hoffman said he began reviewing NFTs while considering a future in which AI agents outnumber humans online. “When you start to think that we’re going to have more agents than people, what does the identity layer look like? What is the notion of, hey, when your agent talks to my agent and we book this chat here, is it a trustworthy transaction?” Hoffmann said. “And that made me think about NFTs again.”
Hoffman said identity systems will exist within companies, but the most difficult problem will be the identity of agents operating over the open Internet.
“There’s going to be a kind of freedom on the Internet, and how does that work? And cryptocurrencies are the obvious answer,” he said.
This argument stems from Hoffman’s previous work at LinkedIn, where real-world professional identity was central to the network’s design. Hoffman said real identity can create “more accountability, more trustworthiness,” while acknowledging that pseudonyms have legitimate uses in some contexts.
Hoffman, who said he bought his first Bitcoin more than a decade ago and never sold any, framed cryptocurrencies as the natural answer to the trust problem of the deepfake era. He cited his own AI clone, Reid AI, which he sent to speak at conferences, as an example of why provenance will become more important as generative media improves.
“When I bought my first Bitcoin in 2014, I thought this was actually part of a design feature, this is how DNS should work. This is how identity should work, generally when you access the Internet,” he said.
That identity problem, Hoffman explained, extends beyond commerce between agents. He pointed to AI-generated content, bot farms, rigged surveys and paid political influence campaigns as examples of why proof of humanity is becoming harder to ignore online.
In a politically calibrated stretch, Hoffman urged the crypto industry not to engage too much with Republicans on policy.
“If the industry says, oh, we’re overreacting against Gensler, etc., and then we’re, so to speak, anti-Democratic Party on this, the problem is that the pendulum swings,” he said. “It’s good to be bipartisan from the point of view that what we care about is the ecosystem. We care about how it plays a good role in society.”
Hoffman also challenged the prevailing narrative that AI is causing layoffs at big tech companies.
“What I’ve seen so far from all the companies saying, ‘I’m doing layoffs because of AI,’ maybe aside from Meta, is not because of productivity, but just because of reorganization,” he said. “We’ve overhired because of the pandemic. We need to change. We’ll call it AI for a position of strength.”
As an investor, Hoffman said he is looking for crypto ideas that may have been tried too early during previous market cycles, but could make a comeback as AI changes the Internet. NFTs are one such area, he said, while “DAOs and other areas” could also see renewed relevance.
When asked at the end what his Bitcoin exit price was, Hoffman did not mention a number. “Is there a starting price?” asked.
