Note: There will be no Briefing from Oct 1-3 as your correspondent will be traveling to an undisclosed location to bring you more exclusive policy news and analysis.

The RAND's new policy primer on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency in financial services is arriving at a good moment, as President Trump's policies are shaking up these two worlds.

The report's central thesis—that the convergence of AI and crypto could fundamentally transform financial services through disintermediation while posing novel systemic risks—aligns perfectly with the administration's dual mandate of promoting innovation while protecting American interests.

RAND correctly identifies that digital assets encompass far more than just Bitcoin, including stablecoins, utility tokens, tokenized assets, and NFTs.

The RAND report delivers a crucial reality check that should temper both excessive enthusiasm and panic about AI-crypto integration: virtually all current deployments remain in proof-of-concept or experimental stages. The authors repeatedly emphasize that despite breathless media coverage and venture capital excitement, there's a striking "lack of empirical evidence and real-world deployments" to support many claims about AI's transformative impact on crypto markets.

However, there is one aspect of the report which merits close attention: autonomous agents equipped with cryptocurrency. In other words, we are talking about AI systems that can independently conduct financial transactions. Circle has already demonstrated proof-of-concept systems where AI agents receive stablecoin payments for completing tasks. This raises obvious regulatory questions, and the answers will have to be careful and nuanced.

The Terminal of Truths case study illustrates the disruptive potential. This semi-autonomous AI gained a substantial online following and successfully promoted the $GOAT cryptocurrency token, driving its market capitalization to $950 million. This wasn't a human using AI as a tool; it was an AI system influencing markets through its own actions.

The implications for market manipulation, fraud, and systemic risk are profound and largely unexplored.

What makes crypto uniquely suited for these agents is, ironically, our current regulatory framework. As the report notes, traditional KYC and AML requirements assume human actors with verifiable identities behind every transaction. Banks require social security numbers, addresses, and other human-specific data to open accounts. But crypto transactions only require cryptographic keys—no human identity necessary. This makes cryptocurrency "uniquely suited for autonomous agents to execute financial operations without human involvement."

The Circle demonstration, where multiple AI agents automatically received USDC stablecoin payments for completing research tasks, hints at a future where AI agents could form their own economy. These agents could "pay for services or data from one another, creating a dynamic marketplace of automated interactions." Imagine AI agents bidding for computational resources, purchasing data feeds, or even hiring other AI agents for specialized tasks—all without human oversight. For conservative policymakers, this presents a fascinating paradox.

On one hand, autonomous agents represent the ultimate free market: entities making rational economic decisions without government interference.

On the other hand, they operate "across borders and beyond the reach of conventional oversight," potentially facilitating money laundering, market manipulation, or other illicit activities at unprecedented speed and scale. The report wisely avoids prescriptive solutions but highlights that existing regulatory frameworks are wholly unprepared for this reality. Worth thinking more about.