Pantera Partner: In the era of intelligent agents, blockchain is the inevitable answer for AI

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Original author: Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital

Original compilation: Saoirse, Foresight News

Summary

AI and blockchain are being integrated around four main pillars: payment settlement, identity systems, open networks, and resource aggregation. All four sectors already have commercialized projects, with Pantera-backed companies having deployments in all areas.

Their underlying logic is naturally complementary: AI represents unlimited supply (mass content, infinite intelligent agents), while blockchain signifies the scarcity of rights verification (verifiable ownership, native on-chain settlement); the former is responsible for generating content and services, the latter for rights confirmation and value settlement.

Currently, market valuations show a clear mismatch: the valuations of ten leading AI companies tracked by Pantera are diverging from crypto asset valuations to an unprecedented degree, yet both are deeply interconnected at the industry’s core.

AI agents do not open physical bank accounts or use federal wire transfer or ACH clearing channels; instead, they rely on stablecoins to perform high-speed machine-level transactions on-chain. The economy of intelligent agents is being built on blockchain infrastructure that few existing institutions have adopted.

Today, global capital is focused on AI, but AI is only half of the industry revolution. A new wave of technological integration is quietly taking shape at the intersection of AI and blockchain. Massive funds are flooding into primary and secondary markets, pushing up AI company valuations, many of which are now bubble-like; meanwhile, the fundamentals of the crypto sector are underestimated, making it a prime long-term investment ground for the ongoing technological revolution. Both technologies alone are hard to make a significant impact; their synergy is the key highlight. For years, markets have treated AI and crypto as two separate trends, but fundamentally, they are two pathways of the same industry wave.

AI has given rise to a new economic entity — autonomous intelligent agents. These entities need to hold assets, transfer value, and collaborate at scale, and crypto and blockchain are the only foundational financial infrastructure designed from the ground up to accommodate non-human entities. Intelligent agents and program robots have already become native users of blockchain, so we believe that most future transactions driven by intelligent agents will occur on-chain. The integration of AI and blockchain is one of Pantera’s most confident research and investment themes, with the team investing heavily in this sector.

Historical patterns of technological integration

Looking at history, the collision of two top-tier technologies often spurs leapfrogging economic development: steam engines with railroads, electricity supporting manufacturing, the internet combined with smartphones. Each time, the addition of new technological capabilities with supporting infrastructure gives rise to entirely new economic models and enduring enterprises.

AI enables near-zero marginal cost mass production of intelligence, content, intelligent agents, and digital identities, creating infinite supply; blockchain anchors scarcity, providing verifiable asset ownership, minimal trust costs for collaboration, and cryptographically trustworthy data. As Dan Morehead and Cosmo Jiang described in Pantera’s latest blockchain report, these two types of talent highly overlap (both rooted in mathematics and open-source culture), with their core logic yin and yang: AI creates incremental value, blockchain defines ownership.

Previously, at the Fusion Summit hosted by YZi Labs, I had in-depth discussions with Alex Odagiu about this macro transformation, exploring how AI agents can leverage blockchain for programmable trust, the implementation of stablecoins and asset tokenization, and the pace of the agent economy’s development.

Source: YZi Labs Fusion Summit, May 2026

Current state of technological integration applications

AI agents need to adapt to the native financial systems of machines

The current financial system is designed for humans, with cumbersome approval processes, restricted access, and heavy reliance on centralized intermediaries. The industry urgently needs infrastructure tailored for intelligent agents, and blockchain is the optimal scalable solution.

Transaction and payment scenarios

Use cases have already been validated. OpenFX uses stablecoins as the underlying clearing layer, with annualized transaction settlement volume exceeding $60 billion. Companies have explicitly stated: the next-generation users will not be natural persons but software programs, and within ten years, AI agents will become the largest trading group in the foreign exchange market.

Intelligent agents cannot open bank accounts or access federal wire transfer and SWIFT systems; they require low-cost, 24/7, permissionless, programmable payment channels, which is precisely the core advantage of blockchain.

Another flagship project, Alchemy, is dubbed the AWS of Web3 and is the key development platform for new AI + crypto applications. From agent-specific wallets to on-chain execution layers, Alchemy significantly lowers the barrier for developers to build agent infrastructure.

Identity verification and rights confirmation become urgent needs

In an environment flooded with AI-generated content and simulated accounts, distinguishing real humans from programs and AI-generated content has become essential. Traditional identity systems relying on centralized institutions—passports, government records, bank cards—are incompatible with the current industry environment. There is an urgent need for a global, cryptographically secure, privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant online identity verification solution, and blockchain fits this demand perfectly.

World (formerly Worldcoin) is a leading project in this sector, building a global privacy-preserving identity and financial network based on human identity verification protocols, cryptographically proving that users are unique natural persons:

Users complete iris scans with World Orb biometric devices for verification;

Users receive a World ID, with identity data hashed and encrypted on the Worldchain public blockchain;

The project has verified over 18 million individual real users, ranking among the top five public chains by active user count worldwide.

As seen from recent corporate collaborations disclosed in Pantera’s latest Stateful podcast, these have practical value: Tinder uses it to combat fake accounts, Reddit to filter real users, Zoom to integrate deep anti-fraud verification during video calls. OpenAI founder Sam Altman co-founded World, foreseeing the massive identity fraud problems that AI technology would bring.

We also invested in TransCrypts, a project focused on sovereign identity and verifiable credentials on a blockchain foundation, allowing users to store trusted records such as education, employment, and income on-chain, resisting AI-generated fake identities and deepfake scams from the source. In an era of widespread intelligent agents, programmable trust is now industry standard.

AI valuation bubble and crypto asset undervaluation

The AI sector’s valuations have skyrocketed, while crypto assets have continued to decline, creating a rare relative value investment window. As of May 2026, the top AI index is trading at a 49% premium over its four-year long-term trendline; Bitcoin’s price is at a 42% discount relative to its long-term historical trendline. Even though the intelligent agent economy will ultimately run on crypto infrastructure, the valuation divergence between the two has reached historic extremes.

Compared to artificial intelligence and trends, Bitcoin is undervalued

Investment and financing in the intersecting AI and crypto sectors are becoming increasingly fierce. Robbie Mitchnick of BlackRock recently stated: AI agents will not use traditional banking systems but will choose blockchain financial tools; cryptocurrencies are the native currency of the machine intelligence era.

The industry’s deployment window has opened

Entrepreneurs working in the field should note: the integration of AI and blockchain is not a future trend but a current reality. Intelligent agents require exclusive payment channels, decentralized identity verification systems, verifiable credentials, programmable currencies, and development infrastructure that treats them as native users.

Projects like Alchemy, World, TransCrypts, and OpenFX, which are part of Pantera’s investment ecosystem, are maturing rapidly. With ongoing favorable regulatory environments worldwide and increasing capital recognition of crypto’s valuation opportunities, now is an ideal time for startups focusing on native agent finance, decentralized identity, AI content proof and rights, and autonomous on-chain collaboration. The industry remains early-stage, with robust underlying technology and exploding market demand.