Here’s a question nobody at JPMorgan is losing sleep over yet, but probably should be: when billions of autonomous AI agents need to send and receive money, who exactly is going to bank them?
Not traditional financial institutions, according to Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. His argument is deceptively simple. Banks require legal entities to open accounts. AI agents are not legal entities. Blockchain doesn’t care either way.
The agentic economy thesis
Siu’s projection is bold even by crypto standards. He forecasts somewhere between 50 and 200 billion AI agents operating autonomously by 2031. To put that in perspective, Earth currently holds about 8 billion humans. So we’re talking about a world where software agents outnumber people by a factor of at least six.
These won’t be glorified chatbots. Siu envisions agents that code, shop, negotiate, and transact independently, each needing its own financial identity. He reportedly manages over 200 AI agents himself for various tasks including coding and shopping, essentially stress-testing the thesis with his own workflow.
