Remy Blaire: AI closely linked to crypto. A new report from Sharplink estimating that AI agents could eliminate roughly a quarter of global financial commissions, and this would potentially save users as well as investors around $1.4 trillion annually by 2035.
And while this $4 trillion revolution does play out, Sharplink does state that the consumer will be the winner as market power shifts away from financial intermediaries and directly back to the account holder.
So where does crypto fit in when it comes to this picture?
Well, the report does suggest that payments and transactions will heavily rely on open, programmable settlement layers such as Ethereum, stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Well, joining us to break all of this down and this report is Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink.
Joseph, good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us.
So I understand you authored this article on the $4 trillion opportunity. So how do you see agentic AI taking off, and what are your timelines as we move forward?
Joseph Chalom: So first of all, great to be with you.
We see this as the next financial revolution. For the first time in history, we have four elements colliding.
You have stablecoins, which are programmable money. You have tokenized assets like stocks, bonds and funds, and you have decentralized finance and on-chain execution.
And when you combine that with new AI agents, there will be a new world where your agents will help you achieve better financial results.
They'll move your idle cash, they will build you better portfolios, and they will save you money as you're looking for insurance and mortgages.
So I think it's a huge step forward. And I think over the next five years, consumers should be best positioned to benefit from this revolution.
Remy Blaire: Yeah. And speaking of which, I do want to hone in on this about consumers winning from this.
So how will agents actually be putting a pretty penny, a total of $1 trillion, back into human hands?
Joseph Chalom: Yeah. So today, the biggest issue in finance is a combination of a lack of universal financial literacy and a lack of attention.
We're in an attention-deficit society.
Just think about it. U.S. consumers have about $15 trillion in checking and savings accounts, most of which are earning somewhere between seven basis points and 35 basis points, so a fraction of 1%.
An agent doesn't sleep. Your agent will understand that you have idle cash, and it'll move it into a money market account that will earn you 3.5%.
That alone will benefit consumers, U.S. savers, about $180 billion a year.
The second thing is there's lots of financial services that are high-fee. To move money across borders costs about 6% today.
You can move it with a stablecoin from one wallet to another near-free.
And it strikes me almost like the Skype moment from 2003, where calling became free, and that became the new benchmark.
So I think many types of fees will come down significantly, and consumers should be the number one beneficiary as fees get equalized and, in many cases, down to zero.
Remy Blaire: Yeah, I like that Skype analogy there, Joseph.
But when we're looking at how blockchain will support tech finance, how do you see this unfolding?
Joseph Chalom: Sure. So today's financial rails are largely built on the Fed ACH standard.
You move money in a day. That standard is from 1975, and it really hasn't been updated since.
Agents, which will be running on rails, will have to have access to stablecoins, which move in an instant for free.
They'll have to use tokenized versions of stocks and bonds, not the analog version, and they'll be able to execute on-chain.
So this is going to be a boon for the new financial rails that were built by crypto companies. They're Ethereum-based, they're other-chain-based.
But it doesn't necessarily mean that this is a crypto revolution. It's going to be a financial revolution.
But these agents need a way to pay instantly, and that only happens on digital asset rails.
Remy Blaire: Yeah. And speaking of this, I do want to get your take on what this will look like for institutions.
So legacy rails as well as mainframe architecture are slowing execution of agentic AI in financial services.
So tell us what you think this race to build agent systems will look like amongst the institutions.
Joseph Chalom: So the legacy financial institutions, banks, credit card companies, legacy payment companies, are going to struggle to essentially defend their moat because their systems are closed.
And at the end of the day, you're going to see new entrants, the likes of Coinbase, Robinhood, Stripe and other more digitally native companies that are going to be building, for the first time, super apps that have access to all your accounts, your deposits, how you earn, how you spend, the mortgages you have, and they have built-in seamless agentic capabilities.
So I think we're going to move from closed systems to more open systems, and the new entrants are going to take a lot more of the share.
The hope here is that we're going to buck the trend of other financial revolutions and technology revolutions where only a handful of big technology companies won.
If it happens on decentralized, open rails, the winner should be the consumer and not a new set of consolidated, scaled winners.
This shouldn't be a winner-take-all. Your agent should be working for you, and you should have the benefit.
That only happens if you run on blockchain rails.
Remy Blaire: Well, Joseph, we will have to leave it there for today.
But thank you so much for simplifying this and walking us through this today. I appreciate your time and wish you a happy weekend.
Joseph Chalom: Thank you, Remy. Speak to you soon.
Remy Blaire: Thank you.
