San Francisco, CA – Crypto isn’t the only thing building faster payment rails. It could create a financial system for non-humans.
As AI agents become more autonomous, developers are already giving them crypto wallets, allowing the software to hold assets, pay for services, trade tokens, and even employ other agents. The technical pieces are falling into place. Are not legal people.
At a recent panel at NEARCON 2026, Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg described this moment as historically significant.
“What if there’s no human behind it?” Garg asked. “It’s some piece of code that the owner of the wallet executes the code to make more money… How does liability work in that case? I don’t really know.”
Crypto makes this possible in a way traditional finance cannot. Blockchains allow for programmable money, instant settlements, and global access. Combine this with AI agents capable of making decisions, and you get something new: software that can both think and transact.
Garg compared this change to the creation of the limited liability corporation in the 19th century – a legal breakthrough that unlocked pooled capital and growth on an industrial scale.
“The cost of participation in the economy has become far lower,” he said. “You’re talking about someone in the world who has relatively little money being able to create value.”
But enforcement remains unresolved.
“You can’t punish AI,” Garg said. “You can shut them down, but they don’t care.”
If autonomous agents begin trading, lending, hiring, and growing businesses on-chain, lawmakers may face a fundamental question: Who is liable when software with its own wallet acts independently?
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