Crypto's primary advantage is its ability to automate processes that rely on expensive human-based trust (brokers, lawyers) with software and cryptography, which offer mathematical guarantees at a fraction of the cost.
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Blockchain's disruption will not impact all of finance equally. Trading firms are safe because market making is a fundamental need. However, intermediaries like banks, exchanges, and custodians face an existential threat as their core function—managing ledgers and access—is directly replaced by blockchain's "private key and a ledger" infrastructure.
As AI agents become sophisticated, they'll need to pay for services. Traditional banking is too slow and fragmented for them. Crypto, as the internet's native money, provides the instant, global, low-fee rails for AI agents to transact with each other and with web services, creating a major new use case.
AI and crypto are not competing but are parallel, complementary forces reshaping business. While AI revolutionizes company creation and internal operations, Internet Capital Markets (powered by crypto) are fundamentally rewriting the external functions of capital formation, trading, settlement, and ownership for this new generation of AI-native companies.
The friction in the current financial system—intermediary fees, settlement delays, and complex processes—acts like a tax paid by everyone. Crypto aims to eliminate this "tax" by creating more efficient, direct transaction pathways, akin to paving over potholed roads.
The paradigm shift with crypto is not about trusting a new entity like a developer. Instead, it eliminates the need for interpersonal trust by allowing anyone—especially competing businesses—to verify the system's integrity through open-source code.
Beyond technical features, Ethereum's core value is its "credible neutrality." The protocol doesn't favor any single user, allowing a Nigerian remittance app to have the same infrastructure access as JP Morgan. This fundamental fairness drives its network effect and widespread adoption.
Multicoin's central thesis is that crypto's ultimate purpose is creating "Internet Capital Markets"—the ability to trade any asset, from anywhere, 24/7, via any software. This broad vision of permissionless, programmable finance is seen as the most significant long-term impact of blockchain, destined to supersede more niche consumer applications or "Web3" concepts.
After years of exploring various use cases, crypto's clearest product-market fit is as a new version of the financial system. The success of stablecoins, prediction markets, and decentralized trading platforms demonstrates that financial applications are where crypto currently has the strongest, most undeniable traction.
For AI agents to be truly autonomous and valuable, they must participate in the economy. Traditional finance is built for humans. Crypto provides the missing infrastructure: internet-native money, a way for AI to have a verifiable identity, and a trustless system for proving provenance, making it the essential economic network for AI.
The "market structure" debate in crypto regulation is about updating pre-internet laws. These laws require intermediaries like broker-dealers for trust, but blockchain makes them obsolete through cryptographic verification, creating legislative tension.