How Will AI Make Payments for Us? The Answer Is Stablecoins

With AI’s capabilities soaring, pressing questions surface around how these advanced systems will handle finances and interact with money.

Robot swimming in stablecoins.
Created by Kornelija Poderskytė from DailyCoin
  • ChatGPT-4o demos left audiences impressed. 
  • The question of how AI interacts with money has become more pressing.
  • Anthony Pompliano predicts AI bots would favor price-stable cryptocurrencies for payment.

The unveiling of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o on May 13 demonstrated a major leap in how humans interact with AI. One awe-inspiring demo showed the advanced language model patiently teaching a young student basic trigonometry concepts, showcasing its ability to engage in intelligent dialogue and high-level knowledge transfer. As AI’s capabilities advance rapidly, big questions loom over its societal impact.

Goldman Sachs expects two-thirds of US jobs to be affected by AI automation to some degree, and McKinsey predicts 12 million Americans may lose their jobs to AI by 2030. With the technology’s seemingly unstoppable rise and inevitable creep into our daily lives, questions arise as to how it will interact with money, with some believing cryptocurrency provides the ideal solution. 

Barriers to AI Using Banks 

With AI’s rapid advancement and its inevitable integration into our daily lives, it has become increasingly urgent to explore how these systems can effectively interface with money and payments. This urgency is heightened by the banking system operating under strict rules not designed for use by non-human entities.

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Banks and financial institutions enforce strict know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements that necessitate human identity verification. An AI system lacks the legal personhood or documented identification to open an account. Furthermore, giving AI access to your banking would open up issues regarding sharing access, particularly in cases of fraud or incorrect purchases.

These barriers and uncertainties under the banking system underscore the need for alternative digital payment rails better suited to AI’s status as a program, leading some to believe the solution lies in cryptocurrencies. 

Stablecoins Over Bitcoin

Wading into the discussion, investor Anthony Pompliano envisions AI bots leveraging traditional banking infrastructure to conduct financial tasks on our behalf. However, autonomous bot-to-bot payments would be tricky if there was no access to banking.

This is where Pompliano sees cryptocurrency, specifically stablecoins rather than Bitcoin, filling the void. He stated, “If a bot wants to send or receive money with another bot, then using these digital wallets will empower them to do so,” as digital crypto wallets can be generated without KYC hurdles, allowing AI bots to exchange value directly.

While Bitcoin is the biggest, most well-known cryptocurrency, making it a seemingly logical choice for AI payment systems, Pompliano argued that stablecoins’ price stability gives them an advantage over notoriously volatile Bitcoin when it comes to providing a medium of exchange.

Even so, Pompliano acknowledged AI’s crypto convergence still raises numerous unanswered questions around regulation, tax implications, and legal frameworks to govern disputes between AI bots and their owners.

On the Flipside

  • AI payment preferences could impact the adoption and market dynamics of favored cryptocurrencies.
  • A system with goods and services priced in fiat will inherently favor stablecoins over BTC for payments.
  • Pompliano assumed AI bots would automatically transact with one another within human-constructed money systems.

Why This Matters

AI’s potential embrace of stablecoins could provide a tailwind for their market capitalization and hasten the end of Bitcoin’s medium of exchange narrative.

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This article is for information purposes only and should not be considered trading or investment advice. Nothing herein shall be construed as financial, legal, or tax advice. Trading forex, cryptocurrencies, and CFDs pose a considerable risk of loss.

Author
Samuel Wan

Samuel Wan is a reporter at DailyCoin covering market affairs. Samuel's has holdings in Bitcoin and Cardano, with other minor holdings across the market.

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