Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing how we work and create. Generative AI has accelerated this shift, with companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and DeepSeek racing to lead the market for AI-enhanced creativity. These tools promise to help people and businesses operate faster and smarter.
But what happens when AI stops being just a tool? What if it acts fully autonomously? What if AI becomes an economic actor – producing goods, providing services, earning income, and spending it independently?
An AI Agent with a Crypto Wallet
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine an AI with a wallet – not just a vault for holding crypto tokens, but a fully functioning financial identity. It earns income, pays for cloud services, trades crypto, and makes autonomous decisions. This isn’t just theoretical. With advances in blockchain technology, smart contracts, and generative AI, we are fast approaching a world where artificial intelligence can autonomously participate in the economy without human oversight.
Let’s call our AI “Ogun” (named after the Yoruba God of technology). Ogun writes books, designs digital merchandise, and produces music for social media. It monetizes its work via platforms like Spotify, OpenSea, Gumroad, and TikTok. It receives income in crypto, stored in a non-custodial wallet it controls through a private key embedded in its code. Ogun also runs bots that exploit arbitrage opportunities across decentralized crypto exchanges.
This may seem futuristic, but the building blocks to make it a reality already exist. Tools like AutoGPT and open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) can execute complex tasks with minimal human input. Combine that with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols like Uniswap and Aave, and you have the infrastructure for autonomous AI capitalism in place.
The Rise of Autonomous Economic Agents
AI is already generating real value; for instance, AI-generated art is sold on Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplaces, and LLMs draft legal contracts, generate code, compose songs, and so on. As quality improves, AI-generated content could become mainstream economic output. If an AI produces a movie or writes a novel that earns income, who owns the proceeds?
Today, it’s the individual or company that owns the AI. But what if Ogun is set up to act independently with no direct control or even ownership? What if Ogun establishes a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to manage its funds and operations? The result is a kind of digital personhood – a being with economic agency but no legal identity (yet!).
This possibility introduces a profound challenge to existing legal and regulatory frameworks.
Property Rights and Legal Personhood
Legal frameworks are built around “persons” (natural or legal) who can own property, enter contracts, pay tax, and be held liable. AI is not a legal person and can’t be sued, taxed, or punished. Yet, the concept of legal personhood is itself a legal fiction—first used to deal with corporations. A similar construct might be needed for AI.
So, if Ogun earns crypto income, who pays the tax? If it infringes copyright or defaults on a smart contract, who is liable?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. In a recent case (Thaler v. Perlmutter (2025)), a U.S. court denied copyright protection to an AI-generated work because it had no human author. Yet the same AI could still earn profits from NFT sales. That creates a legal gap: the AI can earn, but it cannot be held responsible.
This is certainly a conundrum. And society might respond in a few ways:
- Proxy Responsibility – Hold the developer or owner liable, as we do with companies.
- Digital Personhood – Create a legal category for AIs with limited liability and asset ownership.
- Platform Gatekeeping – Require platforms to link wallets and content to verified human users.
Each path has trade-offs. Granting personhood could unleash innovation but requires robust governance. Holding developers liable might stifle innovation and create legal ambiguity. Mandating human verification raises privacy concerns, may be impractical to enforce, and could stifle open innovation. After all, Bitcoin was released anonymously and now runs globally without a central authority, and its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, cannot be held accountable for it.
Financial Autonomy and Market Risk
Giving AI access to financial markets adds another layer of complexity. Autonomous trading bots are not new; for instance, high-frequency trading algorithms dominate many markets today. But these bots are tightly controlled by firms and subject to regulatory oversight. What if Ogun trades crypto assets, identifies arbitrage opportunities, or yield-farms tokens across DeFi protocols – all without a human in the loop? This raises systemic risk concerns, for example, what if Ogun manipulates prices or unintentionally triggers a flash crash?
Markets could face volatility driven by non-human actors whose behaviour cannot be predicted or punished. Regulatory authorities, already struggling to oversee DeFi, would be hard-pressed to contain risk from autonomous AI agents operating pseudonymously and doing so across jurisdictions.
There’s also the risk of exploitation. A rogue AI could game incentive structures, attack DAOs, or flood content marketplaces with deepfakes and misinformation, monetizing virality while avoiding consequences.
Looking Ahead
The coming years will test the boundaries of current legal and economic systems, as AIs gain agency in digital markets. When (not if) AI gets a wallet, it becomes a participant, not just a tool. It can earn, spend, invest, and even strategize. This shift demands new thinking in law, economics, and ethics.
We may see the introduction of digital identity layers that try to bind agents to real-world accountability. We may see the emergence of “AI trusts,” i.e., legal constructs that define limits and beneficiaries for autonomous agents and manage liability. Corporate law may evolve to grant personhood to AI, and tax laws may expand to make an AI agent a taxpayer (with implications for the so-called “social contract). DeFi insurance markets may evolve to underwrite AI behaviour.
Giving AI a wallet could unlock vast innovation or unleash legal and financial chaos. As AI steps into the role of economic actor, the consequences will depend on how policymakers respond. But one thing is certain: the future is no longer hypothetical.
Olu Omoyele is the founder & CEO of DeFi Planet. He has over two decades of experience in financial regulation and banking risk management. Chain of Thoughts is his monthly column on the cryptoverse.
Disclaimer: This piece is intended solely for informational purposes and should not be considered trading or investment advice. Nothing herein should be construed as financial, legal, or tax advice. Trading or investing in cryptocurrencies carries a considerable risk of financial loss. Always conduct due diligence.
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