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AI spending could become a new investment signal

Cathie Wood told attendees at the Robinhood Summit in Houston on Wednesday that investors should start paying attention to where and how AI agents spend money. According to the ARK Invest CEO, the long-used approach of “following the developers” to understand where technology is heading is taking on a new dimension through the economic activity of AI agents.

Wood’s point comes as companies race to build software that can act on behalf of users. These tools are no longer limited to answering questions or generating text; they can also handle tasks such as booking hotels, buying data or sending payments to access a service.

Why investors are watching payment traffic

The tools engineers choose have long been an important clue to which technologies are gaining momentum. In the same way, if millions of AI agents begin selecting software, services and networks on their own, those choices could reveal where future demand is shifting.

For markets, the key question is not just whether agents can make payments, but which financial networks they use and who controls the underlying infrastructure. That issue also directly affects competition between the crypto market and traditional payment companies.

Blockchain, stablecoins and open networks are at the center of the debate

Joseph Chalom, co-CEO of SharpLink and a former head of digital assets at BlackRock, argued in a report last month that the financial system AI agents use should not be concentrated in the hands of a few banks or technology companies. Chalom said users should be able to give an agent limited spending authority, revoke that permission and review a record of the transactions it made.

Chalom also said users should be able to move their agents between different financial providers. In his view, an agent’s identity, financial data and permissions should not remain tied to the closed system of a single company.

How Ethereum and stablecoins stand out

Chalom said open blockchains such as Ethereum could serve as a common financial network. The report said Ethereum was priced at $2,686.95. In this model, different agents, apps and companies can use the same infrastructure without a single bank or tech platform sitting between every transaction.

BlackRock also said in a report released in September that AI agents could create new demand for machine-friendly payment systems. According to the asset manager, stablecoins and blockchain-based payment protocols could stand out in areas such as:

  • Instant, small payments for API calls
  • Purchases of data, computing power or online services
  • 24/7 payment flows that do not wait for human approval

A new test case for the crypto market

Coinbase’s x402 system is being cited as one example of how machines can pay for online services such as data or API access. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also said in a post on X that Grok is currently the leading client for agentic transactions at Coinbase, though he did not share any figures for the activity.

Still, this space is not limited to crypto firms. Stripe, Visa, Google and OpenAI are also developing solutions for agent-based shopping. For investors, the real measure may be which networks AI agents transact on — and whether stablecoins and blockchains gain meaningful real-world usage.

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