Crypto for Advisors: AI Agents and Internet Money

I always say that the robots are going to need programmable internet money — is that time here?

In today’s “Crypto for Advisors” newsletter, Peter Gaffney from Inveniam explains how AI agents will be able to interact with cryptocurrencies and stablecoins and manage investments.

Then, in “Ask an Expert”, Bryan Courchesne from DAiM provides insights into the trends he’s seeing with investors in the market.

Thank you to our sponsor of this week’s newsletter, Grayscale.

– Sarah Morton

Wealth Management is increasingly digital — a seismic shift that is gaining momentum as traditional and digital assets converge. What started with pilots like JPMorgan’s Crescendo platform two years ago has now evolved into on-chain investment strategy aggregators and automated model portfolios, enabling individual wealth managers to scale their portfolio management abilities.

Perhaps the strongest underlying driver of this shift is the inclusion of AI Agents. Agents are actors within a digital environment that learn from their surroundings and are empowered to make decisions based on a set of guidelines. One popular example is a decentralized finance (DeFi) Yield Agent that exists within a decentralized application (dApp) and is permissioned to deposit, withdraw, and re-deposit user capital across DeFi yield strategies that best generate the desired performance outcome for the user at any given time. This is a fully hands-off approach in which the user trusts the agent to make continuous, real-time decisions, scanning the crypto landscape to ensure proper allocations.

Early market players like ParaFi, Exodus, and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) all emphasize how AI will drive the majority of on-chain transactions by the end of the decade, some citing agents paying in stablecoins at scale, with others noting massive data querying from the immutable database that is a blockchain, resulting in 90% of all on-chain transactions.

With roughly $300 billion and $35 billion in stablecoin supply and tokenized real-world assets, respectively, investors and adopters of these will open themselves up to the AI universe, where legacy participants simply cannot. Emerging wealth managers can command a premium on pricing and access to alternative and bespoke strategies that legacy players simply cannot. This creates a shift or blurring of the lines between the white-glove service nature of private banking and cookie-cutter wealth management, enabling financial advisors to effectively serve clients of all sizes with a range of investment strategies.

(Source a16z State of Crypto 2025 Report)

Recent AI integrations by crypto-native players, like the linkage of real-world asset metadata to AI agents on MANTRA via Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Coinbase Wallet’s MCP connectivity to Claude and Gemini enable real-time crypto querying, or the ability for AI agents to request and interpret blockchain data, balances, and smart contract states. Initiatives like these expand capabilities beyond cryptocurrencies into broader capital markets where AI agents can query, interpret, and act on verified asset data across key private-market asset classes.

For advisors, agentic capital markets mean portfolio strategies that self-adjust, harvest tax losses in real-time, and dynamically rebalance across tokenized assets and DeFi yields. This marks a leap in how both crypto and on-chain securities are managed, signaling a new era in which trusted data and automated intelligence define the next generation of wealth management.

– Peter Gaffney, director of DeFi & Digital Trading, Inveniam

Q. What trends are you seeing from investors in the current market?

While stablecoins continue evolving, bitcoin remains the anchor of market sentiment — and we’re seeing that tested.

Despite recent frustration with bitcoin’s price action, it’s worth noting that the mid-October pullback (10-15%) is among the shallowest of any bull cycle. In mid-October, long-term holders sold off billions, yet ETFs and digital asset trusts (DATs) stepped in with only a fraction of that demand. The interesting part? Whale and blue whale activity quietly began increasing again around October 10 — a healthy signal for bitcoin’s long-term outlook.

One trend we’re watching closely is investors getting caught in short-term trading traps: trying to time the market or chase altcoins to make up for gains. That’s a tough game, especially when factoring in taxes and market timing risks. It’s also worth noting: bitcoin is relatively close to its all-time highs, while many altcoins remain down significantly more.

As for what’s next, while the outlook for the rest of the year looks constructive, especially with momentum from the stablecoin-focused Genius Act, our vision remains long-term. We believe bitcoin has a path to $500,000 by 2030.

– Bryan Courchesne, CEO, DAiM

• IBM announces a platform to support banks engaging in cryptocurrency, stablecoin, and tokenization activities.
• Western Union plans to launch a stablecoin for users on its payment network.
• Visa builds on its stablecoin strategy with integrations into four more blockchains.