Raoul Pal: Billions of AI Agents Will Trade on the Blockchain, Existing Financial Systems Cannot Support It
Raoul Pal stated that smart contract networks are the only track for the economy to go on-chain, with billions of AI agents set to launch and continuously engage in high-frequency trading.
AI agents will pay for computing power, data, and service fees among themselves, with trading scale and speed far exceeding human markets. The existing financial system cannot support this due to slow settlement speeds, making smart contract networks the only viable solution.
Institutions are accelerating their layouts: Franklin Templeton claims AI agents are the "ultimate use case" for driving blockchain adoption, Coinbase's agent payment track has been adopted by Google and Amazon, Samsung is integrating stablecoins into the Galaxy wallet, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon supports the Clarity Act.
Funds are flowing from traditional payment systems to on-chain stablecoins and smart contract networks, with AI agents becoming a new demand side, putting pressure on traditional financial institutions to transform.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Historical Behavior
Raoul Pal, founder of the macro hedge fund GMI, has long advocated the "crypto adoption curve" theory. In 2020, he predicted that "institutional adoption would drive a crypto bull market," and in 2021, Bitcoin breaking $60,000 validated his judgment. In 2023, he proposed the "economy on-chain" narrative, believing that traditional financial infrastructure will be replaced by smart contract networks. His historical views often lead the market by 6-12 months, but short-term price fluctuations often spark controversy.
Capital Path
The institutional layout path is clear: Franklin Templeton will launch a tokenized fund (BUIDL) in 2024 and shift to AI agent payment scenarios in 2026; Coinbase will launch the Base chain in 2025 and collaborate with Google and Amazon to develop agent payment tracks in 2026; Samsung will integrate a stablecoin wallet into the Galaxy S25 in 2025 and expand to AI agent automatic payments in 2026. Capital is flowing from "speculative trading" to "infrastructure," with stablecoins and smart contract platforms becoming the "settlement layer" of the AI economy.
Analogy + Industry Position
Similar cases: In the rise of e-commerce in the 2010s, PayPal and Stripe became the "machine payment" infrastructure, replacing traditional bank transfers. Currently, AI agent payments are in the "early stage of PayPal"—Google and Amazon adopting the Coinbase track is similar to eBay adopting PayPal in the 2000s. The industry position is at the "eve of an AI financial infrastructure explosion"—compared to the $10 billion TVL of the 2020 DeFi summer, the potential scale of AI agent payments in 2026 could reach trillions of dollars (billions of agents × daily transactions).
Structural Judgment
Essentially, this is a technological substitution leading to a reconstruction of the settlement layer. The settlement cycles of traditional financial systems (SWIFT, ACH, credit card networks) range from T+1 to T+3, while AI agents require millisecond-level settlement and 24/7 availability. Smart contract networks (Ethereum, Solana, Base) provide "instant settlement + programmability," becoming the native settlement layer of the AI economy. This explains why institutions are accelerating their layouts—not for speculation, but to "seize the financial infrastructure of the AI era." When billions of AI agents begin trading, on-chain stablecoins and smart contracts will transition from "crypto assets" to "machine economic operating systems."
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Machine economy needs machine finance
Settlement speed determines economic scale
The value of infrastructure is always greater than speculation