Why Wall Street Is Watching Agentic Finance in Crypto

Forget retail traders and institutional FOMO. The next crypto boom might be run by AI agents, autonomous programs moving money faster than any human could.

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) recently said AI agents will make 1 million times as many payments as humans, and they will use crypto.

AI Agents Are Taking Over Crypto: Wall Street’s Next Obsession?

That’s not hype. It’s a potential seismic shift for payments, DeFi, and blockchain adoption. The trend is going mainstream.

Beep, the leading agentic finance protocol on Sui Network, just rolled out support for USDsui, a Stripe-backed stablecoin.

“AI agents can now send, trade, and earn with instant, zero-fee stablecoin payments on Sui,” the network shared recently.

Users, or their AI agents, can now automatically farm yields, allocate funds across protocols, and rebalance portfolios without touching a button.

The system scans yield rates, risk scores, liquidity depth, and impermanent loss potential in real time. Reported efficiency gains? Up to 1.8x higher returns than manual strategies.

Non-custodial by design, Beep keeps funds in users’ wallets while agents execute on-chain delegated logic. Micro-transactions, treasury operations, and even agent-to-agent (A2A) payments happen automatically, almost instantly, with near-zero fees.

This is exactly the kind of infrastructure Stripe, Ethereum, and Sui are building toward.

Wall Street’s Next Obsession?

Wall Street is paying attention. Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise Asset Management, called agentic finance “a big emerging catalyst” during a recent appearance on BeInCrypto’s Expert Council.

According to the Bitwise executive, most internet transactions in the near future will be agentic and blockchain-based. In his opinion, institutional adoption of these systems could create durable market trends.

“When you have a company like Stripe saying the future is agentic finance and it’s built on blockchain, that’s a pretty good catalyst,” Bitwise’s Matt Hougan added.

AI agents are not just for payments. They dominate trading now. Analysts estimate 60–80% of global crypto trading volume is already AI-driven, with projections hitting nearly 90% soon.

Autonomous systems reduce human error, locate liquidity faster, and move capital 24/7. This creates huge on-chain activity, efficient capital allocation, and sustained demand for native tokens.

The impact is already measurable. AI quant funds reported an average return of 52% in 2025, while 84% of retail traders lost money.

Retail Crypto Traders Lose Money. Source: NFT Evening Report

“AI agents know where the liquidity is,” CZ said in a recent post, highlighting how machine-speed decision-making creates an asymmetric advantage.

Meanwhile, crypto insiders see a clear generational pattern: 2017 = retail-led; 2021 = investors; 2025 = institutions, and now? AI agents.

“Next Crypto Bull market will be led by AI and AI Agents,” analyst Ash Crypto suggested.

Early adopters of these systems, from trading bots to automated yield allocators, are positioning themselves for outsized gains, potentially reshaping entire market cycles.

Platforms like Walbi and Polymarket are already showing how AI can dominate trading and prediction markets. Meanwhile, analytics tools from firms like Palantir and TWG AI track activity in real time.

AI Agents Dominate Trading and Market Cycles

Ethereum looks set to become the backbone for these AI-driven economies, while chains like Sui enable micro-payments, programmable finance, and autonomous treasury management.

AI agents can now pay for APIs, compute, or on-chain services without human oversight, creating a fast-growing “agent economy” that operates at machine speed.

The broader implication is that agentic finance could serve as the clearest bridge between AI adoption, payments infrastructure, and blockchain adoption.

Institutions are starting to take note, signaling that the next crypto cycle may be defined not by human behavior, but by algorithmic, autonomous capital moving relentlessly in the background.

“As you start to add these up,” Hougan said, “eventually that scale goes like this, and we enter a new bull market.”

If you thought crypto was fast before, you haven’t seen anything yet. AI agents are here, the rails are ready, and Wall Street (and the next generation of institutional players) are watching.

The next cycle may not be human-driven. It could be algorithmic, autonomous, and unstoppable.