SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Crypto is beginning to power more than faster payments — it may become the backbone of a new, non-human financial system.
At NEARCON 2026, Avichal Garg of Electric Capital warned that as AI agents gain autonomy, developers are already equipping them with crypto wallets. That lets software hold assets, pay for services, trade tokens and even hire other agents — capabilities blockchains enable through programmable money, instant settlement and global reach. “What happens if there’s not a human behind it at all?” Garg asked. “It’s some piece of code that owns a wallet, executing code to make more money… How does liability work in that case? I actually don’t know.”
Garg said the shift could be as transformative as the 19th-century invention of the limited liability corporation, which unlocked pooled capital and industrial-scale growth. By lowering the cost of participation, blockchains let “anybody in the world, with relatively little money, [create] value,” he argued.
But the legal framework to govern autonomous, wallet-holding software is glaringly underdeveloped. Enforcement questions remain: you can’t punish an AI in the traditional sense — you can only turn it off, and that doesn’t address harms or assign responsibility. If autonomous agents begin trading, lending, hiring and scaling businesses onchain, regulators and courts will soon face a foundational question: who is liable when software with its own wallet acts independently?
The debate is already attracting attention across the industry. Read more: Kraken’s co-CEO could trust AI with 100% of his crypto — Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi isn’t convinced.
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