Bitwise CIO Sees AI Agents Driving 10-100x Blockchain Growth

Tokenization is moving assets and financial transactions onto blockchain networks, while AI agents are emerging as software capable of making decisions and executing payments autonomously. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan argues that combining the two could shift blockchain usage from mainly human-driven activity toward high-frequency machine transactions, potentially expanding demand for digital-asset infrastructure and creating a larger addressable market for public blockchains.

Hougan said investors may be underestimating the transaction potential created as AI agents converge with tokenized markets. He forecast that blockchain transaction activity could rise by 10 to 100 times, as autonomous software transacts more frequently than people. The report did not specify a date by which that growth could occur or attach a dollar value to the projected expansion, making the estimate a long-term thesis rather than a time-bound forecast.