Grayscale Sees AI and Blockchains as Complementary Technologies in Emerging Economy

Investors have been reassessing software valuations in light of the growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools across the economy. While this trend has led to a decline in software stocks and crypto values, Grayscale believes that AI agents and blockchains are actually complementary technologies.

According to Grayscale's head of research, Zach Pandl, AI agents will become economically useful once they can pay and receive payments, not just generate outputs. He argues that if AI agents are equipped with wallets, blockchains offer a direct path to settle transactions globally, around the clock, without relying on bank rails.

Stablecoins may be the first place where AI-driven payments show up, with low-value transfers indicating the shift from pilot projects to production. However, this also raises concerns about verification and provenance, as deepfakes improve and synthetic content becomes harder to distinguish. Public blockchains can provide tamper-resistant logs that support verification workflows.