Haseeb Qureshi says agent-driven crypto payments thesis has been disproven

Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi said at the TOKEN2049 conference that the early-year narrative claiming AI agents would broadly adopt crypto payments has not held up. He argued that traditional payment rails, including credit cards, were already ready for that use case, undercutting the idea that crypto was the default settlement layer for agents. Qureshi framed the shift differently: in his view, agents do not need crypto, people do. He said agents could still make crypto more reliable by preventing users from making avoidable mistakes, comparing that function to how banks stop reckless actions. Qureshi also tied crypto and private AI to a broader privacy and power debate. In what he described as a panopticon era shaped by sharply lower surveillance costs through AI and a rise in physical attacks, he said crypto and private AI may serve as a last line of defense for individuals seeking to resist state power and regain privacy.