{"id":31355,"date":"2026-05-07T18:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31355\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T18:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:39:14","slug":"defi-is-not-dead-its-going-mainstream-with-ai-agents-crypto-executives-agree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31355\/","title":{"rendered":"DeFi is not dead, it\u2019s going mainstream with AI agents, crypto executives agree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami \u2014 Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is not dying but instead moving deeper into the financial mainstream alongside the rise of AI agents, crypto executives participating in the Securing the Next Decade of Decentralized Finance<\/a> panel Thursday at Consensus Miami 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrypto is absolutely hurtling into the mainstream,\u201d said Hunger Horsley, co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management. \u201cStablecoins, tokenized assets and DeFi are part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel came weeks after a series of DeFi North Korean hacker exploits, including Drift Protocol<\/a> and Kelp DAO<\/a>, which resulted in roughly $600 million in losses, drawing criticism over the sector\u2019s security.<\/p>\n

DeFi is \u201can inevitable future,” said Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, dismissing claims that DeFi is fading, much less dead. The technology underpinning lending protocols and smart contracts is already proving itself at scale, he argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s $100 billion on lending markets or more,\u201d Assia said. \u201cThe technology stack is mind-blowing, and it\u2019s being battle-tested all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI agents are speeding up interest<\/p>\n

Much of the discussion focused on how AI agents are accelerating interest in crypto-native financial infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Guy Wuollet, general partner at a16z Crypto, argued that autonomous AI systems will ultimately require financial rails that look \u201ceither literally DeFi or a lot like DeFi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we believe AI agents are going to be economically important actors, we need a financial system built for them,” Wuollet said.<\/p>\n

Assia described experimenting with AI agents capable of independently opening wallets, bridging assets, researching trades and executing transactions across prediction markets and DeFi protocols. \u201cDeFi and AI are both native to each other,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Horsley compared DeFi\u2019s role for AI agents to the rise of APIs and open-source software in traditional internet infrastructure. \u201cYou could think of DeFi as enabling a lot of financial services for AI agents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The executives also agreed that institutional attitudes toward crypto and DeFi are changing quickly.<\/p>\n

Horsley said Bitwise, which manages roughly $15 billion in assets, is now receiving requests from regulated fintech firms and neobanks looking for compliant ways to offer DeFi-related products to customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe institutions and corporates are arriving,\u201d Horsley said. \u201cThey finally feel able to interact with the space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wuollet said many large financial firms are initially approaching blockchain infrastructure less for crypto speculation and more for operational efficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinance is going through a digital transformation,\u201d he said. \u201cInstitutions want to replace their backend and core ledger with a blockchain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panelists said the convergence between traditional finance, tokenized assets, DeFi and AI agents is likely to accelerate over the coming years as institutions become more comfortable operating onchain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miami \u2014 Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is not dying but instead moving deeper into the financial mainstream alongside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,7537,6318,7963],"class_list":{"0":"post-31355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agentic-ai","8":"tag-ai-agents","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","10":"tag-consensus-miami-2026","11":"tag-defi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}