Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money

Sylvia To, vice president, Bullish Capital Management, argues that F.A. Hayek, Satoshi and AI together will drive a stealth denationalization of money and fundamentally change financial sovereignty.

“Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Sylvia To on AI agents choosing denationalized money”

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To traces crypto’s cypherpunk ethos — privacy, decentralization and censorship resistance — and cites Vitalik Buterin’s March 2026 thread on X about building “sanctuary technologies” that create “shared digital space with no owner,” enable “interdependence that cannot be weaponized” and advance “de-totalization.”

She recalls Hayek’s 1976 argument that money should be a product chosen by markets and lists Hayek’s characteristics of “good money”.

“Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Sylvia To on AI agents choosing denationalized money”

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Non-state issuance: not decreed, not voted, not bail-out-able.

Rule-based monetary policy: predictable supply schedule, not discretionary.

Global choice: adoption is voluntary; anyone can opt in or out.

Resistance to capture: no central issuer to pressure, no board to replace.

Settlement without permission: value transfer doesn’t require institutional approval.

To argues that Bitcoin plausibly meets many of Hayek’s requirements as a monetary network whose issuance “is not negotiated.”

She says Bitcoin’s current volatility is the market’s cost of discovering an ungoverned, credibly scarce asset.

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She warns that stablecoins are a trojan horse that do not denationalize money because they digitize existing national money.

“Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Sylvia To on AI agents choosing denationalized money”

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She says stablecoins extend national money’s reach and largely import the dollar.

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She argues that pegging to the dollar ties users to its inflation, surveillance, sanction regime, banking chokepoints and regulatory priorities.

To predicts that autonomous agents, not humans, may become the decisive adopters of new monetary rails.

She says agents care about machine-readable transaction metadata, instant programmable finality, composability, low transaction overhead, censorship resistance and predictable monetary rules.

She argues agents will optimize for reliability and legible rule sets.

“Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Sylvia To on AI agents choosing denationalized money”

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She says when agents at machine speed prioritize those properties the denationalization of money will be an engineering outcome rather than a political movement.

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She repeats: “When that tipping point arrives, denationalization of money won't feel like a philosophical triumph. It will be an inevitable engineering outcome, propelled not by ideology, but by raw machine necessity.”

Headlines of the Week include Intercontinental Exchange acquiring a minority stake in OKX valuing the firm at $25 billion.

ICE will license OKX's spot crypto prices to launch crypto futures and OKX will offer ICE futures and tokenized equities to its customers.

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Morgan Stanley named Coinbase and BNY as custodians in a proposed bitcoin ETF filing.

Kraken became the first crypto company to secure Fed master account access, which speeds deposits and withdrawals for large traders but does not let Kraken earn interest on reserves or access Fed emergency lending.

Kazakhstan's central bank will invest $350 million worth of gold and forex reserves into digital assets focusing on shares of high-tech and cryptocurrency infrastructure companies and crypto-linked index funds.

When airstrikes hit Iran on Feb. 28 crypto outflows from Nobitex spiked 873%, which analysts say may reflect a complex mix of war-time panic and business-as-usual flows.

Chart of the Week reports Kamino's OnRe market grew 80% to nearly $90M in 30 days.

“Crypto Long & Short: AI agents choosing denationalized money In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Sylvia To on AI agents choosing denationalized money”

@coindesk

That growth cements Kamino as the primary liquidity layer for OnRe's on-chain reinsurance protocol.

OnRe lets users bet on a $480B+ real-world vertical by using $ONyc as collateral.

The native $KMNO token has dropped 16% over six months amid a broader market downturn and 13M monthly token unlocks (0.13% of total supply).

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It says the views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc., CoinDesk Indices or its owners and affiliates.

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