YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Haseeb Qureshi - Agents + Crypto: What's Real & What's Cope - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026

Haseeb Qureshi - Agents + Crypto: What's Real & What's Cope - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026 — Transcript

by TOKEN2049 · 3,856 words · 557 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:07I'm going to be talking today about the
0:10intersection of agents and crypto. We're
0:13going to be talking about what's real
0:14and what's cope. So, first thing I think
0:18you should always start with an
0:19admission or a confession. My confession
0:22is this. So, I've been talking about
0:23agents in crypto for a while and I was
0:26wrong.
0:28And I was wrong because I said that
0:30agents are all going to be using crypto.
0:33And I said that there's no way that the
0:35traditional financial rails are going to
0:37be able to be ready in time for what
0:39agents are going to start to do once
0:41they come online and start being used in
0:43our daily lives. And it turns out that
0:45is not true. So the reality is that your
0:49agent doesn't need crypto. You do. And
0:52I'm going to develop this thesis through
0:54this talk. So, first thing you guys
0:56remember earlier this year, everybody
0:58was talking about how agentic payments
1:00were going to explode. You had CZ, you
1:03had Brian Armstrong, you had X42 moving
1:05up and to the right, and everybody was
1:07like, "Oh my god, it's so obvious the
1:09real users of crypto are not going to be
1:11humans. They're going to be AIS."
1:14Okay. Well, this chart goes up to
1:16November last year. Um, if you know
1:18what's happened since then, uh, the
1:21chart went way down. Okay. It turns out
1:23agents are not using X42. It turns out
1:2690% of the payments volume at X42 was
1:29farming.
1:31Surprise, surprise, it's crypto. And the
1:34reality is that agents are kind of here.
1:38Agents are here. We have them with
1:40Hermes agent. We have them with Meta's
1:41Muse. We, you know, Open AAI just rolled
1:43out DOTs. There's Instinct. These things
1:45are mass market products. They're
1:47growing like crazy. And what are they
1:48using? They're using cards. They're
1:51using credit cards. They're using credit
1:53cards just like we all do. Now, we we've
1:56seen companies like Rain, like Visa,
1:59like Ramp, like Stripe all launch these
2:01agentic card products that basically
2:03create these kind of subcards underneath
2:06your card that have rate limits. They
2:08have restrictions on how much can be
2:10spent, on where they can be spent. All
2:12of these companies realize just as much
2:13as we did that agentic commerce is going
2:16to be a big thing and they're ready for
2:17it. And the reality, you know, how many
2:20of you out there right now are using one
2:22of these AI agent products? So, give me
2:23a show of hands. How many people have a
2:25Muse, a Hermes agent, something like
2:26that. Okay, it looks like maybe 15 20%
2:29of people have uh have used a product
2:31like this. Um, I have a product like
2:32this. Uh, I gave it a crypto wallet, but
2:35it turns out most stuff you cannot buy
2:37with crypto today. Uh, I also gave it a
2:40card and turns out most of the stuff
2:42that it buys for me is using a card. So
2:45the reality is that today with consumer
2:48payments, cards are mostly the answer.
2:50Now they're not going to work everywhere
2:52and obviously in the US and in a lot of
2:54developed markets, cards are ubiquitous.
2:55They're not ubiquitous everywhere in the
2:57world and agents are going to be
2:58everywhere in the world. So it's not
3:00that cards are the only answer, but it
3:04is clear that this story that we were
3:06telling and I was one of the people
3:07telling the story at the beginning of
3:08the beginning of this year before agents
3:10really became mainstream is that these
3:12things are going to use crypto. They're
3:13going to trust crypto more than
3:14traditional Rails and traditional Rails
3:16are not going to be ready. Well, that's
3:17wrong. The Rails are ready. Okay, so
3:21that's the coat part. That part is not
3:24where agents and crypto are going to be
3:27interacting outside of the usual stuff.
3:29So, international macro payments, the
3:31kinds of things that you use crypto for,
3:33your AI agents are going to use crypto
3:35for. But there's other things about
3:37crypto that do fundamentally change with
3:40agents. And that's what I want to focus
3:41on more in this talk.
3:44So the highle thing to understand about
3:47agents is that agents make hard things
3:51easy. That's the core of how agents
3:54change our interactions with the world.
3:56And now governments all around the world
3:58are feeling this and they're terrified.
4:01Why are they terrified? They're
4:02terrified because governments provide
4:04all sorts of services. And a lot of
4:06those services were kind of dependent on
4:10this huge bureaucratic morass that they
4:13assumed people would not be able to
4:14easily navigate. So if you want to file
4:16a court claim, if you want to file a
4:18complaint as a consumer with a CFPB, if
4:21you want to file for um you know some
4:23kind of uh welfare, if you want to have
4:25a housing complaint, all of these things
4:27were gated behind these bureaucratic
4:30hoops that you had to jump through. And
4:31what people are seeing now is that
4:33there's an explosion in every single
4:35thing like this at almost every
4:37government around the world. They're
4:39getting dodoed by AI agents that are
4:41just coming in and dutifully consuming
4:43services on behalf of their uh owners.
4:46Now, the problem with this is that it
4:49turns out we really don't have
4:50governments that can do this for
4:51everyone. Uh we we don't have systems
4:54that are designed for everybody in the
4:56world to be able to have CFPB complaints
4:59uh filed with some business that they
5:00don't like. And so the reality is that
5:01these things were actually secretly
5:03rationing systems and they're not ready
5:06for the world of AI agents. Okay. Now,
5:10so the theme agents make hard things
5:11easy. Well, what are other hard things
5:13besides navigating bureaucracy?
5:15Classically, one of the hard things that
5:16has made crypto adoption difficult is
5:19that crypto is hard. Crypto is hard.
5:22It's hard to understand. Most people
5:23find it extremely opaque and very
5:25difficult to use. And that's one of the
5:27reasons why agents are going to
5:28fundamentally change your relationship
5:30with crypto. And if not yours
5:32personally, you might be very crypto
5:34native. Uh but a lot of people in your
5:36life who've always said like look,
5:37crypto seems cool in the abstract, but I
5:40don't know how to use it. I don't know
5:41how to navigate a wallet. I don't know
5:42how to deal with gas fees. I don't know
5:44how to move assets around. I don't
5:45understand bridging. All this stuff is
5:47way too complicated for me. And as a
5:49result, I don't trust it. I'm afraid of
5:51it. Um and of course, it's not just that
5:53people are afraid. They reliably mess
5:55up. They get hacked. They get fished.
6:00They go into honeypotss. They lose their
6:02crypto assets. 20% of all Bitcoin is
6:05most likely lost just from looking at
6:07onchain records. Which tells you that
6:10agents, one of the biggest things about
6:13how they're going to change crypto is
6:14they are going to make crypto more
6:15reliable by protecting you from your own
6:18stupidity. And as humans, we're pretty
6:21stupid. Now, why do we trust banks? Most
6:24people who say, "Ah, crypto is kind of
6:26scary. I don't really trust it." But
6:27they do trust their bank. And you know,
6:29candidly, I am the same way. When I send
6:32a large amount of money using my crypto
6:34wallet, I'm always a little bit scared.
6:38And I've been interacting with crypto
6:39for 10 plus years. I'm, you know, if
6:41anyone shouldn't be scared, it's me. But
6:43I'm always a little bit scared when I'm
6:45sending a large amount of money in my
6:46wallet. And why am I a little bit
6:48scared? I'm a little bit scared because
6:49maybe, just maybe, I'm accidentally
6:53sending money to North Korea right now.
6:55And it's always in the back of my head
6:56and it should always be in the back of
6:57your head. Now, I'm never worried when I
7:00go into my bank account that I'm
7:02accidentally wiring money to North
7:03Korea.
7:04Why am I not worried? I'm not worried
7:07because my bank protects me from my own
7:09stupidity. If I do try to wire money to
7:12North Korea, my bank is going to stop me
7:13and say, "Hey, yo, what are you doing?
7:15Don't do that."
7:16The reason why that works is that
7:18there's an intelligence layer sitting in
7:21between me and my money and that
7:23intelligence layer is the bank. The bank
7:26in it sits as this intelligent agent on
7:29my behalf managing my own mistakes.
7:33Well, once we start making AIS the API
7:36to crypto, once you're going to be
7:38interacting with your agent to interact
7:40with crypto, then now all of a sudden
7:42the same thing will be true for you in
7:43crypto is that you're never going to get
7:45fished again. You're never going to get
7:47hacked again. You're never going to get
7:48scammed again. You're never going to use
7:49something when uh there's a DNS
7:51poisoning attack and turns out you're at
7:53the wrong interface. Uh when there's an
7:55active exploitation of a smart contract,
7:57your agent will always go check the
7:58contract first and see that there's
7:59anything weird going on. all of these
8:01little mistakes or of course, hey, I
8:03thought I was copy and pasting this
8:05address, but actually it's North Korea.
8:09Your agent will always check. Your agent
8:10will never be lazy. Your agent will
8:12never skip a step. Your agent will never
8:13be tired. It will never make the same
8:15mistake that you will. And so, every
8:17single one of these companies realizes
8:20that the way that we use crypto in 5
8:22years is not going to be the way that we
8:23use crypto today. It is going to change
8:26almost everything about our interaction
8:28with this technology and the way in
8:30which people's trust relationship with
8:32crypto is going to be refashioned. Okay.
8:36Now the second thing that I want to
8:38point out about this is that um when I
8:41said you know agents make things easy
8:43that were hard one of the things that
8:46this interacts very deeply with is
8:47actually privacy. Now what do I mean by
8:50that?
8:52So my claim is that privacy has never
8:54really been a right. We've never really
8:56had effective privacy in most societies.
8:58Privacy has been effectively a rate
9:01limit. Similar to what I was describing
9:03with government services is that you
9:05know it's not that the government
9:07doesn't allow everybody in the world to
9:08send a complaint to the CFPB. Just in
9:10practice we didn't because it was just
9:12too annoying. It's too difficult.
9:13There's too much bureaucracy. Most
9:15people won't do it unless they really
9:16really care. Well privacy is kind of the
9:18same way. In fact, um, just recently in
9:22the Supreme Court, Justice Alto said
9:23this. In the precomputer age, the
9:25greatest protections of privacy were
9:27neither constitutional nor statuto, but
9:30practical. This was a case where they
9:33were looking at warrantless surveillance
9:35by police installing GPS trackers on
9:38cars. And the question was, was this a
9:40constitutional violation of the right to
9:42privacy? And their claim was that, well,
9:44look, there's nothing stopping you from
9:45just like getting in a car and following
9:46someone's car. What's the difference
9:48between that and a GPS tracker? Right?
9:49Isn't that basically the same thing?
9:50It's not like the police now have a a
9:52new tool with a GPS tracker. They
9:54couldn't have done manually if they
9:55wanted to. And nothing about that is
9:56illegal. We all know that as a
9:58policeman, you can go follow someone's
9:59car as long as you want. And what he
10:02points out, which I think is correct,
10:03and we're now starting to realize this,
10:05is that the right to privacy
10:08was always a matter of friction. It was
10:11not a matter that the constitution says
10:12you have privacy or that legally you
10:14have privacy. It's that it was just too
10:15impractical for the police to literally
10:17follow every single criminal around all
10:19the time. But technology changes that.
10:21It makes it's now trivial to follow a
10:23car around all the time, everywhere it's
10:25going. The same thing Dario Amode, the
10:29founder of anthropic in his face off
10:31with the Department of Justice, sorry,
10:33with the Department of War, uh, points
10:35out the same thing is that powerful AI
10:37makes it possible to assemble a
10:38comprehensive picture of any person's
10:40life automatically and at massive scale.
10:43And what he's referring to, of course,
10:44is that every single person out there,
10:47myself included, has all sorts of data
10:49about themselves that's been leaked
10:51everywhere. All these uh all these
10:53hacks, all of these data breaches. That
10:55just means that on the dark web on every
10:57single one of us is just floating around
10:59the sewage of information. And the only
11:01thing preventing somebody from using
11:03that information to figure out who you
11:05are, to figure out what you're doing, to
11:07piece together a picture of your life,
11:09is just time.
11:12It's just work. It's just nobody
11:14bothers. Nobody cares. Nobody cares
11:15about you. Nobody cares about me. Well,
11:17maybe a few people care about me, but uh
11:18most people it's just kind of why would
11:21anyone bother? Well, we're now in a very
11:24different world. We're in a very
11:27different equilibrium about the cost of
11:29achieving privacy and of taking away
11:31that privacy from somebody else. There's
11:34been a lot of drama lately about this
11:35company called Flock, which has these
11:38cameras that are installed in many
11:41different cities around the world. And
11:42people are getting really upset about
11:43Flock. It's taking off in the US. And a
11:45big part of the reason why is that you
11:48can search through the Flock central
11:49database 80,000 cameras in a single
11:52query. And basically, it allows you, and
11:54again, you know, having cameras on
11:55street corners, that's been around for a
11:57very long time. Nothing illegal about
11:58it. The difference is just scale.
12:02Quantity is a quality of its own. When
12:05you have one of these cameras sitting
12:07everywhere in every single street corner
12:09and you can use AI to instantaneously
12:12search every single camera on every
12:14single street corner everywhere. Then
12:16now all of a sudden you have a
12:18panopticon.
12:19Now all of a sudden the government knows
12:22everything all the time of where
12:23everybody is. The only difference was
12:26technology.
12:28And so the same thing we're seeing in
12:29crypto is um physical attacks against
12:33crypto holders are increasing
12:35dramatically. 2025 and 2026 we've seen
12:37all-time highs physical attacks reported
12:40against crypto holders. Now why is this
12:42happening? Part of the reason why this
12:44is happening of course is that many
12:46people have some public information
12:48about their out there about themselves
12:50and about their crypto holdings. Now you
12:52know this uh the defense for most people
12:54was that like well why would anyone
12:55bother? I'm just a small time guy. You
12:57know, I I'm not super loud. Maybe I'm
12:59not a big public figure on Twitter. You
13:01know, why would I need private security?
13:02Why would I need to hide where I live?
13:04Why would I need to do any of these
13:05things? Well, the only real constraint
13:06was some bad actor being sufficiently
13:09motivated to put a query into an LLM, go
13:13download some data on the dark web for a
13:15couple dollars, and figure out where you
13:16live, figure out how much crypto you
13:18hold, figure out all these different
13:19data leaks about you and what your net
13:21worth is, and then come to your house.
13:23That's all it took. There was no big
13:25change in the information out there.
13:27There was no big change in the
13:28capabilities. It's just that before
13:302025, if you wanted to do this, you had
13:33to really want to do this. You had to
13:35spend significant time on every single
13:36target that you decided to go after.
13:38Today, you don't. Today, you don't. Now,
13:42this panopticon
13:43is a big part of why crypto exists.
13:47It's always been a big part of why
13:48crypto exists.
13:50And the difference between AI and crypto
13:52on this dimension is that AI is a
13:56technology that fundamentally empowers
13:59the state. It makes the state more
14:01powerful because it scales up what the
14:03state can do at any given time. The
14:05constraint on almost every government
14:07was that it's too slow. It's too stupid.
14:09It doesn't understand enough about all
14:11the data that it has at its fingertips.
14:13Well, now it does understand it. Crypto
14:15is the opposite. Crypto pushes that
14:17power away from governments into the
14:19hands of individuals. And this
14:21ultimately is the only counterveailing
14:23force you're going to have in a world
14:25where the government is becoming more
14:27and more
14:28powerful, more and more centralized,
14:32more and more
14:35um able to see everything that we are
14:38doing.
14:40Now, the problem with privacy
14:41historically is that, you know, the
14:44thing that people often say is that, you
14:45know, well, yeah, you can talk about
14:46privacy, but people don't really care.
14:49People are lazy. They don't really think
14:51about it that much. You know, okay,
14:52they're going to use Muse Meta's AI
14:54product and they're going to give Meta
14:55all their chat logs. They're going to
14:56give their chat logs to Chatbt. They're
14:58going to give it to OpenAI. They're
14:59going to give it to Google. People don't
15:01care. They'll only really talk about
15:03privacy, but they don't care when push
15:04comes to shove. And the story I think is
15:07largely correct, which is that privacy
15:09mostly only wins when it's easy, when
15:12it's a very small leap to go from
15:14non-private to private. Right? So you
15:15saw this with the web is that it wasn't
15:17until Let's Encrypt started offering
15:19very cheap and and effectively free
15:22HTTPS certificates that people started
15:24going to HTTPS on mass. This started
15:27after the Snowden revelations, but
15:28basically the entire internet now is on
15:29HTTPS. And why are people willing to do
15:31it? Well, back in the day, if you were
15:33using an SSL connection, it was
15:35extremely slow. People only use SSL when
15:37you're going through like a checkout
15:38page and putting a credit card through
15:40the internet. Now, everything you do
15:42uses HTTPS. And the reason why is
15:45because it's costless. It's easy. It
15:47doesn't you don't nothing is required of
15:48you in order to get privacy in every
15:50single web request that you make. The
15:52same thing is true with encrypted chats.
15:54you know there there have always been
15:55N10 encrypted uh uh chat uh applications
16:00but only until you saw signal which was
16:03very usable and then eventually WhatsApp
16:05which moved entirely to be end encrypted
16:08using the signal uh signal inspired
16:10protocols that we now have billions of
16:13people using N10 encrypted chats because
16:16it's easy because they don't have to do
16:17anything you don't have to lift a finger
16:18you just use WhatsApp and now all of
16:19your chats are encrypted the same thing
16:22has now happened increasingly with Zcash
16:24is that so much of the UX improvements
16:26in Zcash, you can draw a direct line to
16:28why you see more and more usage and more
16:30and more shielded activity within Zcash
16:32is because it's easy. So I claim that AI
16:37is going to fundamentally make the same
16:39thing true of privacy and it's the way
16:41in which people are going to start
16:43pushing back against the natural
16:45encroachment of this technology on their
16:49freedom and their privacy. And so in
16:52that sense, your AI agent is going to be
16:55your bull work against the encroachment
16:57of privacy in your life. Privacy is now
16:59a prompt. You can tell your agent when
17:01your agent is capable enough and
17:02powerful enough, make me private. Erase
17:04my public footprint. Give me top-notch
17:07obset. Go onto the dark web and remove
17:09any evidence you can of me. Go buy me a
17:11PO box. Go find whatever ways you can to
17:15red team me. Imagine you're a bad actor
17:17and try to figure out where I live. Try
17:19to figure out how to attack me. what
17:20would you do to try to get into my life?
17:22your agent can figure this out for you
17:23and it can basically be your private
17:25security especially in the digital realm
17:28and so you know the ways in which you
17:30know Zcash might be hard to use or
17:31privacy preserving protocols might be
17:33hard to use you know all these things
17:35the answer is you know look still today
17:36it's harder to use Zcash than to use
17:38something very simple but if your AI
17:41agent is going to be sitting in front of
17:43you if they're going to be the API to
17:45crypto then it costs you nothing just
17:48say hey in instead of doing this thing
17:50with Bitcoin do it with Zcash
17:52Instead of doing this thing in plain
17:53text, do it in uh in crypto text. All of
17:56that is going to fundamentally change
17:58your ability to protect yourself from
18:00what's coming in society. Now, the last
18:03element that is a part of this complete
18:06picture of how we are going to protect
18:07ourselves in the age of this panopticon
18:10is with private AI. And of course, this
18:12is a reference to Venice in which we're
18:13investors. Venice is a privacy
18:16preserving AI inference platform. You
18:18can think of them as a private chatbt.
18:19They've been growing like crazy. and uh
18:21they use crypto rails underneath the
18:23hood. And in fact, with Venice, if you
18:24want to be entirely anonymous, you don't
18:26have to be. You can use Venice with a
18:28Google login and you can pay with a
18:30credit card, but if you want to, you can
18:32use Venice entirely with an Ethereum
18:35address and pay with stable coins,
18:37allowing you complete anonymity. And you
18:38can pay with other currencies as well.
18:40And so this allows you again that last
18:42step. If you want to have fully
18:43encrypted interactions with your AI, you
18:46can do so using privacy preserving
18:48technology. I think this is going to be
18:51the most important battle from the
18:53perspective of civil liberties over the
18:55next decade is one how you are going to
18:58protect yourself from the increasing
19:00power of the state and second how you
19:02are going to maintain your control over
19:04AI because AI is going to become the
19:06most politicized technology of the next
19:08decade and so that's why I say that look
19:11the stories we told that agents are
19:12going to be using crypto
19:14I don't know that agents are going to be
19:15using crypto to do everything that they
19:17do I don't think that's true I think for
19:18most consumers AIS are going to use the
19:20same things that you're going to use.
19:22But my claim at the end of the day is
19:24that it's not your agent that needs
19:26crypto. It's you who needs crypto.
19:30Thank you.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Haseeb Qureshi - Agents + Crypto: What's Real & What's Cope - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026 by TOKEN2049, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,856 words across 557 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.