Pantera Capital: A New Wave of Technological Integration Is Coming — Why AI Needs Blockchain

Author: Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner of Pantera Capital; Translation: Shaw, Golden Finance

Summary

• Artificial intelligence and blockchain are converging around four main pillars: Payments, Identity Verification, Open Systems, and Resource Aggregation. All four areas are already commercially deployed, and Pantera Capital’s investments have deep layouts in all four tracks.

• Their underlying logic is naturally aligned: Artificial intelligence represents abundant supply (massive content, endless intelligent agents), blockchain represents scarce rights confirmation (verifiable ownership, native settlement systems); the former is responsible for value creation, the latter completes authentication and payments.

• The market has not yet priced in this fusion logic. The ten leading AI company index compiled by Pantera shows that, despite the deep integration of the two technologies, valuation divergence between AI and crypto assets has reached historic extremes.

• AI agents will not open bank accounts, use the Federal Reserve’s wire transfer system (Fedwire), or rely on Automated Clearing House (ACH) for interbank settlement; instead, they will complete transactions on-chain at machine speed via stablecoins. The financial channels underpinning the economy of intelligent agents are precisely the tracks most institutional investors have yet to deploy.

Currently, global capital’s focus on AI is understandable, but AI is only half of the industry transformation picture. A groundbreaking technological fusion is quietly taking shape at the intersection of AI and blockchain. Massive funds are flooding into primary and secondary AI targets, pushing the valuations of top AI companies into overbought territory; meanwhile, crypto assets, in the context of this long-term technological revolution, remain severely undervalued.

The true industry dividend does not come from a single technology but from their mutual empowerment. For years, the market has viewed AI and crypto as two separate super tracks, but in essence, they are two sides of the same industry revolution.

AI gives rise to a new economic entity: Autonomous Intelligent Agents (AI Agents), which need to hold assets, transfer value, and collaborate at scale. Blockchain-based crypto infrastructure is the only foundational layer built from scratch, designed specifically for non-human trading entities. Robots and intelligent agents have already become native participants in blockchain networks, so we believe that most future economic transactions driven by intelligent agents will be realized on-chain.

Technology convergence is one of Pantera’s most confident research and investment themes, with institutions investing substantial manpower and capital into deep layout.

What History Tells Us

Looking at the history of industry development, each major economic leap has emerged from the collision of two core technologies: steam engine + railroads, electricity + manufacturing, internet + smartphones. Each disruptive pairing of capabilities and supporting infrastructure has spawned entirely new economies and long-lasting leading companies.

AI brings nearly unlimited supply: Computing power, digital content, intelligent agents, and digital identities have marginal costs approaching zero; blockchain anchors certainty and scarcity: verifiable property rights, trustless collaboration, cryptographic facts. As Dan Morehead and Cosmo Jiang stated in Pantera’s latest blockchain research report, the talent pools in these two fields highly overlap (both rooted in mathematics and open-source ecosystems), with underlying philosophies complementing each other: AI creates infinite abundance, blockchain locks in limited scarcity.

Application Scenarios of This Fusion Technology

AI agents cannot do without native financial systems

The current financial system is designed around human users, with low processing efficiency, restricted access, and heavy reliance on centralized intermediaries. We are entering a new era, where the market needs infrastructure tailored for new entities—AI agents—and blockchain is the scalable, efficient solution.

Trading and Payments

Some companies have already demonstrated the feasibility of this model. Our portfolio project OpenFX uses stablecoins as the settlement backbone, with annualized total transaction volume (TPV) surpassing $60 billion. The company explicitly states: the next wave of massive users will no longer be natural persons but software programs. Within ten years, AI agents are expected to become the primary participants in foreign exchange trading.

Agents do not need bank accounts, nor do they use Fedwire or SWIFT. They require low-cost, instant settlement, permissionless, 24/7 operational financial channels that support programmable settlement—precisely the core advantages of blockchain.

Another leading company in this track, Alchemy, is known as the AWS of Web3, supporting the development of next-generation AI + crypto applications. From dedicated wallets for agents to on-chain execution layers, Alchemy significantly lowers the barrier for developers to build agent-related infrastructure.

Urgent Need for Identity and Persona Verification

In the era of AI agents and synthetic content proliferation, distinguishing natural persons, machine programs, and AI-generated content has become a necessity.

Traditional identity systems like passports, government records, and bank cards serve human interactions in centralized scenarios but cannot adapt to new business models. There is an urgent global need for an internet identity verification scheme based on cryptography, balancing privacy, resistance to censorship, and attribute verification, and blockchain perfectly meets all these requirements.

Pantera’s investment project World (formerly Worldcoin) is a benchmark in this field, building a global privacy-preserving identity and financial network based on Proof of Personhood technology, using cryptography to prove that users are unique, real natural persons.

• Users complete iris scans with the World Orb biometric device;
• After verification, they receive a World ID, with identity information hashed and encrypted on the Worldchain public blockchain.
• Currently, World has verified over 18 million independent natural persons, ranking among the top five most active public chains globally.

Sam Altman, during his tenure leading OpenAI, co-founded the World project, foreseeing that AI technology would generate a series of identity verification challenges.

We also invested in TransCrypts, which is building a blockchain infrastructure for sovereign identity and verifiable credentials. Users can fully own and control their employment, income, and qualification records on-chain. This system can effectively resist AI scams, deepfakes, and synthetic identity attacks. In a future dominated by intelligent agents, programmable trust has become an industry standard.

AI Market Overvalued, Crypto Assets Undervalued

The valuation of the AI sector has soared, while the crypto market has experienced a correction, creating a highly attractive valuation comparison opportunity.

As of May 2026, the mainstream AI index is approximately 49% above its four-year trend line; Bitcoin’s price is about 42% below its long-term trend line. Despite the deep integration of AI and blockchain (AI agents will ultimately rely on crypto infrastructure), the valuation divergence between the two has reached historic extremes.

Bitcoin’s price relative to AI and long-term trends is comparatively low

Investment and financing competition in the intersection of AI and blockchain tracks is intensifying. Pantera has been deeply involved in blockchain investments for over 13 years. Relying on long-term industry experience, extensive industry resources, and cyclical pattern analysis, we have a solid competitive advantage in discovering and securing quality projects.

Recently, BNY Mellon executive Robbie Mitchnick emphasized: AI agents will not choose traditional banking infrastructure but instead rely on blockchain-based financial tools. Cryptocurrencies are machine-native currencies tailored for the AI economy.

To Entrepreneurs: Your Era Has Arrived

To developers working in the industry: The fusion of these two major technologies is no longer a distant vision but a current reality.

The foundational channels needed by AI agents are infrastructure that traditional finance systems have never designed since their inception. They require identity systems that can verify natural persons and their attributes without centralized control, verifiable credentials, programmable currencies, and developer infrastructure that treats intelligent agents as native entities.

Currently, infrastructure tracks are rapidly maturing, with projects like Alchemy, World, TransCrypts, OpenFX leading the way; industry regulation continues to improve marginally; capital is increasingly recognizing the valuation and investment potential of this sector.

If you are positioning in these directions: native financial systems for intelligent agents, decentralized identity, on-chain verifiable AI outputs, autonomous systems, and on-chain collaboration—this is the best window of opportunity. The industry remains in early stages, core technological modules are complete, and market demand is poised for explosive growth.