Overview
- Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets, Sandy Kaul, published a public post arguing that agentic AI—software that completes tasks with little human input—will drive demand for blockchain networks and native tokens.
- Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire voiced a similar view, framing agentic AI and programmable digital money as a single technological shift rather than two separate trends.
- Kaul and other proponents say blockchains are better suited than traditional payment systems for machine-to-machine micropayments because they enable programmable transactions, cryptographic identity and near-instant settlement.
- Franklin Templeton has been building blockchain products and partnerships, which gives the thesis institutional weight but stops short of claiming that large-scale tokenized machine-to-machine commerce has already materialized.
- Early commercial signs, such as brokerages offering agentic features that can trade or make purchases for users, suggest a developing market that could push software pricing toward pay-per-task models and create steady token demand if agent adoption scales.