The thesis below comes from Utkarsh Ahuja, founder and managing partner of Moon Pursuit Capital, published as a bylined column. He is a crypto investor arguing that crypto infrastructure will capture AI value, so readers should weigh it as an investment case from an interested party rather than as reporting. CoinDesk notes the views are the author own.
- Ahuja argues that if AI agents begin negotiating with one another, buying computing resources, paying for data and executing transactions continuously, existing payment infrastructure built around people and institutions will not suit millions of autonomous programs making low-value cross-border transactions. He points to programmable money, stablecoins, onchain identity and provenance as the components such an economy would need.
- Goldman Sachs has routed its roughly $100 billion FTIXX Treasury fund to institutional crypto firms through Lynq, a settlement network used by digital-asset companies, without tokenizing the fund at all.
- Cboe Global Markets and S and P Dow Jones Indices extended a licensing agreement that leaves room to explore tokenized options, moving blockchain-based instruments closer to established derivatives markets.
- Bitcoin fell to $82,500 on Monday before recovering above $84,000 as yields settled after the 10-year briefly touched 5.2%. Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $30 million on Tuesday, against $2.84 billion gathered over six sessions the previous week.
What Happened?
Ahuja frames the opportunity as sitting beneath both sectors rather than in either, arguing investors should look past the application layer toward payments, settlement, identity, cybersecurity, custody and the rails connecting traditional and digital markets. He is explicit that attaching AI to a crypto project does not create value, and warns that narratives outran fundamentals in previous crypto cycles with the same risk present now. Separately, Vitalik Buterin published a post describing a different Ethereum for 2030, pairing the blockchain with cryptographic proofs and networks of computers operating outside it. In tokenized equity trading, volume is consolidating into bStocks and Robinhood while Backpack share has fallen to around 2%.
Why It Matters?
The Goldman development undercuts the column it appears alongside, and that is the most useful thing in this newsletter. Routing a $100 billion Treasury fund to crypto trading firms through a settlement network, explicitly without tokenizing it, demonstrates that institutions can connect to digital-asset plumbing while skipping the blockchain wrapper entirely. If the settlement benefit is available without tokenization, the case that traditional assets must move onchain weakens considerably. Institutions appear to be adopting the connectivity and declining the conversion. The ETF flow figure deserves equal attention. Thirty million dollars on Tuesday against $2.84 billion over six sessions the previous week is a decline of roughly 99% in the daily run rate, which is the sort of detail that gets lost in a headlines roundup. Long-term infrastructure theses are easier to hold when near-term institutional demand is not evaporating week to week, and anyone building a position on this argument should know what current flows look like. On the substance, the agent economy premise is sound and increasingly evidenced: Manus has launched agents with their own email addresses, phone numbers and digital wallets, and Coinbase x402 protocol lets agents pay in stablecoins without human approval. What remains contested is who captures it. Visa, Mastercard, Google, Amazon and Cloudflare have all joined the x402 Foundation, which suggests the incumbents intend to own agent payments rather than cede them, and their participation is as plausible an outcome as a crypto-native one. Ahuja own caution about narrative outrunning fundamentals is the right frame to apply to his own argument.
What Next?
Watch whether other large asset managers follow Goldman in connecting to crypto settlement networks without tokenizing, since a pattern there would define how traditional finance actually adopts this infrastructure. Any concrete tokenized options product from Cboe and S and P Dow Jones Indices would be the first move of blockchain instruments into mainstream derivatives. Spot bitcoin ETF flows over the coming fortnight will show whether Tuesday $30 million was a pause or a turn. On the agent side, the measurable question is transaction volume through agent payment protocols rather than announcements, and whether stablecoins or card networks carry it. Tokenized equity volume consolidating into Robinhood and bStocks is worth tracking as an early indication of whether these markets concentrate the way conventional ones do.
Affected Tickers and Coins: GS, SPGI, HOOD, BTC, ETH, COIN, CRCL
Source: CoinDesk
