CoinDesk’s latest edition of Crypto Long & Short leads with a question that sits below the usual AI investment debate. Instead of asking which company will dominate models, apps or platforms, Moon Pursuit Capital founder and managing partner Utkarsh Ahuja asks what kind of financial infrastructure an AI-driven economy would actually run on if artificial intelligence becomes as economically important as markets expect.
Ahuja’s answer is that blockchain and digital assets are likely to be part of that foundation. He is careful to draw a line around the claim. The argument is not that every AI company needs a token, and it is not that adding an AI label to a crypto project creates value on its own. The more compelling opportunity, he writes, sits underneath both sectors, where autonomous software starts interacting directly with financial systems and needs infrastructure that can move value as quickly and as programmatically as information.
Why blockchain rails may fit an AI-agent economy
Ahuja argues that AI agents are moving toward a role that goes well beyond generating text or analyzing data. In the world he describes, those agents negotiate with other agents, buy computing resources, pay for data, execute transactions and manage financial decisions within parameters set by humans. Traditional payment infrastructure was built around transactions initiated by people and institutions. It was not designed for a setting in which potentially millions of autonomous software agents conduct low-value transactions across borders on a continuous basis.
That is where blockchain infrastructure stands out in his view. Money on blockchain rails can be programmable. An AI agent can interact with a wallet, execute a smart contract or transfer a stablecoin without the same layers of manual intervention that are common in traditional financial systems. Stablecoins matter in particular because they connect blockchain programmability with a unit of account that markets already understand.
From that starting point, Ahuja says investors should widen their AI lens. The opportunity is not limited to owning companies that build models or applications. If AI creates a large increase in machine-to-machine economic activity, demand should also rise for the infrastructure that lets those machines transact, prove identity, establish ownership and exchange value.
Identity, provenance and ownership records
Identity is one of the clearest examples in the piece. As autonomous agents become more capable, markets will need ways to determine who or what is behind a transaction and what an agent is authorized to do. Ahuja makes the same point about provenance. When AI systems consume data, create intellectual property or execute transactions, it becomes more important to establish where information came from and who owns what.
He does not present blockchain as a complete answer to every part of those problems. His point is narrower: blockchains can provide verifiable, shared records, which makes them a natural component of the infrastructure stack that an AI-agent economy may require.
A capital-markets angle that may be underappreciated
Ahuja also points to a capital-markets angle that he believes is often overlooked. Tokenization is already bringing traditional assets onto blockchain rails, while stablecoins have shown that meaningful financial activity can operate onchain. At the same time, AI is making financial decision-making more automated. Those trends are still developing separately, but he argues that their convergence could matter.
An AI agent that can analyze markets but cannot efficiently hold, exchange or settle assets is limited by design. Put programmable intelligence together with programmable assets, and the range of possible use cases becomes much broader.
Even so, he warns against treating every project with exposure to both AI and crypto as deserving a valuation premium. In earlier crypto cycles, narratives often ran ahead of fundamentals. He sees a similar risk around AI now. Rather than chase labels, he says he would focus on infrastructure solving real problems created by greater automation: payments, settlement, identity, cybersecurity, custody and the rails linking traditional and digital markets.
Where investors may want to look
Ahuja writes from the perspective of an investor and trader, and says he is most interested in structural shifts that create new flows of capital and economic activity. AI is likely to be one of those shifts. But he argues that investors should not assume all of the value will accrue at the application layer. Some of the largest opportunities may emerge in the financial infrastructure needed to make a more autonomous economy function.
He closes with a three-part framing: the internet changed how information moves, blockchain changed how value moves, and AI is changing who, or increasingly what, can make economic decisions. Investors, he says, should pay much closer attention to what happens when those three changes collide.
Institutional headlines highlighted this week
CoinDesk says the dominant theme this week is traditional finance wiring itself into crypto infrastructure from both directions.
- Goldman Sachs is routing its roughly $100 billion FTIXX Treasury fund to institutional crypto firms through Lynq, a settlement network used by digital-asset companies, without tokenizing the fund.
- Cboe Global Markets and S&P Dow Jones Indices have extended a licensing agreement that leaves room to explore tokenized options products, which CoinDesk describes as another sign that blockchain-based instruments are moving closer to established derivatives markets.
- Vitalik Buterin, in a post titled The cryptographic world computer, outlined a different version of Ethereum for 2030 by pairing the blockchain with cryptographic proofs and networks of computers operating outside it.
- Bitcoin recovered above $84,000 after falling to $82,500 on Monday, as Treasury yields steadied following the 10-year Treasury yield’s brief move to 5.2%. Spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $30 million of inflows on Tuesday. CoinDesk describes that as modest but positive after the $2.84 billion gathered over six sessions the previous week.
Chart of the Week
The newsletter’s chart section says tokenized-equity decentralized exchange flow is consolidating into bStocks and Robinhood, while Backpack’s share has dropped to about 2%. Even so, BP has continued to climb to about $1.35. CoinDesk says the market is paying up for what it describes as the one licensed, tradable token proxy for the theme.
Sponsored content note at the end of the newsletter
At the end of the edition, CoinDesk includes a short promotional summary titled Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real World Yield in Productive Stablecoins. The summary says diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5% to 7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to about 4%, that GENIUS pushes yield off-chain, and that the total addressable market grows to $4 billion in three years.