Who Was Crypto Designed For? An Expert Argues It’s Not Humans
Haseeb Qureshi, managing companion at Dragonfly, argues that crypto’s persistent friction stems from a deeper mismatch: its structure seems higher aligned with synthetic intelligence (AI) brokers.
In his view, a lot of crypto’s perceived failure modes will not be design flaws however alerts that people had been by no means the perfect main customers.
The Human-Crypto Disconnect
In an in depth submit on X, Qureshi argued that a elementary divide exists between human decision-making and blockchain’s deterministic structure. He stated the early imaginative and prescient of the trade imagined a world the place smart contracts would substitute authorized agreements and courts, with property rights enforced straight on-chain.
That shift, nevertheless, has not materialized. Even crypto-native corporations akin to Dragonfly nonetheless depend on standard authorized contracts.
“When we signal a deal to take a position right into a startup, we don’t signal a sensible contract. We signal a authorized contract. The startup does the identical. Neither of us are comfy doing the deal with out a authorized settlement…In truth, even within the instances the place we now have an on-chain vesting contract, there’s often additionally a authorized contract in place,” he said.
According to Qureshi, the problem isn’t technical failure however social misalignment. Blockchain techniques perform as designed, but they don’t seem to be structured round human habits and error. He additionally contrasted this with traditional banking, which has advanced over centuries to account for errors and misuse.
“The financial institution, horrible as it’s, was designed for people,” he added. “The banking system was particularly architected with human foibles and failure modes in thoughts, refined over lots of of years. Banking is customized to people. Crypto isn’t.”
He added that lengthy cryptographic addresses, blind signing, immutable transactions, and automatic enforcement don’t align with human intuition about money.
“That’s why in 2026, it’s nonetheless terrifying to blind signal a transaction, to have stale approvals, or to unintentionally open up a drainer. We know we must always confirm the contract, double-check the area, and scan for handle spoofing. We know we must always do all of it, each time. But we don’t. We’re human. And that’s the inform. It’s why crypto at all times felt barely misshapen for us,” the chief remarked.
AI Agents: Crypto’s True Natives?
Qureshi prompt that AI agents may be more naturally suited to crypto’s design. He defined that AI brokers don’t fatigue or skip verification steps.
They can analyze contract logic, simulate edge instances, and execute transactions with out emotional hesitation. While people might choose the authorized techniques, AI brokers might favor the determinism of code. According to him,
“In that sense, crypto is self-contained, totally legible, and utterly deterministic as system of property rights round cash. It’s every thing an AI agent might need from a monetary system. What we as people see as inflexible footguns, AI brokers see as a well-written spec…Even legally, our conventional financial system was designed for human establishments, not AIs.”
Qureshi forecasted that the crypto interface of the future shall be a “self-driving pockets,” fully mediated by AI. In this mannequin, AI brokers handle monetary actions on behalf of customers.
He additionally prompt that autonomous brokers might transact straight with one another, positioning crypto’s always-on, permissionless infrastructure as a pure basis for a machine-to-machine economic system.
“I feel it’s this: crypto’s failure modes, which at all times made it really feel damaged for people, on reflection had been by no means bugs. They had been merely indicators that we people had been the mistaken customers. In 10 years, we are going to look again at amazement that we ever subjected people to wrestle with crypto straight,” Qureshi confused.
Still, he cautioned that such a shift wouldn’t happen in a single day. Technological techniques usually require complementary breakthroughs earlier than reaching mainstream relevance.
“GPS needed to look forward to the smartphone. TCP/IP needed to look forward to the browser,” Qureshi famous. “For crypto, we would simply have discovered it in AI brokers.”
Recently, Bankless founder Ryan Adams additionally argued that crypto adoption has stalled attributable to poor person expertise. However, he prompt that what seems to be “unhealthy UX” for people may very well be optimum UX for AI brokers.
Adams predicted that billions of AI brokers might finally drive crypto markets past $10 trillion.
“In a 12 months or two there’ll be billions of brokers, many with wallets (then a 12 months later they’ll be trillions). The “AiFi narrative” is underground like defi was in 2019. The dry tinder is quietly gathering however sooner or later it is going to ignite. No one is taking note of crypto now as a result of value is down…however i imagine AI brokers will scale to trillions of crypto wallets. AiFi is the subsequent frontier of DeFi,” the post learn.
The machine-native crypto thesis is highly effective, however actual constraints stay. AI brokers might transact autonomously, but legal responsibility nonetheless finally rests with people or establishments, preserving authorized techniques related.
Deterministic good contracts cut back ambiguity however don’t get rid of exploits, governance failures, or systemic danger. Lastly, an argument is also made that if AI turns into the first interface, crypto might fade into backend infrastructure quite than perform as a parallel monetary order.
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