CZ says AI agents could lead the next wave of cryptocurrency adoption

CZ believes that AI-powered trading and payments could arrive within months rather than years, with cryptocurrencies being the default path.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known in cryptocurrency circles as CZ, said AI agents could become one of the biggest drivers of adoption in the industry.

This is because, according to him, autonomous software will likely adopt blockchain-based payments long before traditional financial systems adapt to their needs.

CZ says AI and cryptocurrencies are natural partners

Czechoslovakia made wide-ranging comments interview with Alex Thorn of Galaxy Research, and his argument was somewhat mechanical. Today, AI can find you the cheapest flight, but it can’t actually buy you the ticket, he said. This is because payment methods like cards need humans to swipe them, or at least authenticate them, and the moment two-factor authentication or KYC document checks appear, AI agents hit a wall they can’t get past.

Blockchain technology, by contrast, is built on application programming interfaces (APIs) from the ground up, meaning an autonomous system can interact with it in the same way it would interact with any other software.

“I think trading and payments for agents will come in a matter of months, not years,” Zhao told Thorne. “And they will be using cryptocurrencies.”

He framed it as less of a prediction and more of an inevitability given how the infrastructure is built: an AI agent that needs to transact on someone’s behalf has to deliver something that’s programmable, and most of the legacy financial system isn’t.

CZ also disputed the idea that AI is pulling capital and attention away from cryptocurrencies, noting that people are already trading AI-related stocks using cryptocurrency tracks, meaning, in his telling, that the hype around AI is actually adding to trading volumes on blockchains rather than competing with them.

“Even the money that went there is still flowing on the blockchain,” he said.

Essentially, his point was that blockchain, AI, and the Internet are three separate technologies that will all continue to expand alongside each other rather than cannibalizing each other, in the same way that the Internet didn’t disappear when blockchain came along.

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The former CEO also linked this to financial inclusion, telling Thorne that with billions of adults remaining outside the traditional banking system, permissionless payments infrastructure could open up participation in ways that legacy banking rails couldn’t.

Adopting AI comes with both opportunities and risks

Zhao’s point of view is not entirely new. Venture capital firm a16z Crypto made the same point in a December 2025 report, He argues AI agents will need payment systems capable of transferring value at the speed of the Internet. At the time, I suggested that stablecoins and blockchain networks could become the settlement layer of choice for machine-to-machine transactions.

But early experiments with combining these agents were not without incident. For example, in April, a company called PocketOS lost its entire production database after an AI coding agent It has been deleted With all backups, in one API call. Elsewhere, another AI agent known as Lobstar Wilde is accidentally discovered sender $450,000 worth of tokens from a person who begged for 4sol, apparently to fund a relative’s treatment for tetanus.