When I wrote Technology Has Been Eating the World, But It’s About to Exponentially Consume It earlier this year, I argued that artificial intelligence isn’t just another wave of innovation……..it’s an accelerant for everything that came before it. But what happens when AI collides with money itself?
2026 might be the year we find out. Because just as AI begins to automate cognition, stablecoins are quietly automating trust, the foundation of all value exchange.
Together, they form the operating system for a new economy: one that never sleeps, never waits for settlement, and compounds wealth at machine speed.
The World’s Financial Plumbing Is Stuck in the 1970s
Every time you tap “Pay,” a relic of the past wakes up. Wire transfers, clearing houses, T+2 settlements, these were built for a human world of business hours and closed weekends.
But we’re moving into an economy where AI agents will transact 24/7, negotiating, hiring, paying, and investing in milliseconds. They can’t queue for a bank transfer or wait three days for “funds to clear.”
As I wrote in Stablecoins: Crypto’s First Real-World Application, the real innovation in crypto wasn’t speculation……it was the creation of a trust protocol for money.
Stablecoins like USDC or USDT aren’t just digital dollars; they’re programmable financial primitives. They allow machines to move value the way the internet moves information………instantly, globally, and transparently.
That single shift, programmable trust is what the internet did for knowledge in 1995.
AI Is About to Step on the Gas
If you think AI today feels fast, wait until it starts controlling its own wallets.
In Technology Has Been Eating the World…, I described how the exponential curve of progress is now compounding across every industry simultaneously. AI doesn’t just create new products, it compresses decision cycles, squeezes inefficiencies, and compounds productivity.
But there’s a missing link: money that can keep up. When AI can deploy capital, pay for APIs, fund compute cycles, or purchase data in real time……..without waiting for human approval or bank intermediaries, the global economy enters a new gear.
Stablecoins are that missing gear. They give AI an economic language, a way to act financially, not just think.
The Era of 12% Returns May Be the Minimum, Not the Goal
Last year, in Why a 12% Annual Return Is Essential to Maintain Your Purchasing Power, I argued that investors must aim higher than they realise just to stay still. Inflation, debt expansion, and currency debasement have quietly eroded the power of “safe” returns.
But here’s what’s new: the next leg of inflation may not come from oil or wages…….it’ll come from velocity.
When AI and stablecoins fuse, the speed of money multiplies. Transactions happen continuously, liquidity is unlocked, and every asset becomes tradable 24/7.
The upside? Productivity and capital efficiency explode.
The risk? Central banks may lose control over the levers that once managed monetary flow.
In a machine-driven economy, velocity itself becomes the inflation driver. Which means those who rely on 5% returns and “safe” savings will fall behind even faster.
Tokenization: The Bridge Between the Physical and Digital Economies
We’re witnessing the digitisation of everything. Stocks, property, art, treasuries……all becoming tokenised, fractional, and tradable at any hour of any day.
In practical terms, that means:
- Your investment property could be 20% owned by someone in Singapore, 5% by a DAO in Dubai, and 0.001% by an AI hedge fund.
- Real estate liquidity moves from years to minutes.
- Capital allocation becomes global and continuous.
This isn’t theoretical………it’s the next financial architecture being built in real time.
The United States’ new regulatory framework (the “Genius Act” and “Market Structure Act”) is laying the rails for it: clear, open, and pro-innovation. It’s a bet that open financial infrastructure will outcompete central-bank digital currencies, just like the open internet outcompeted closed intranets in the 1990s.
The U.S. Dollar’s Hidden Upgrade
Stablecoins are more than fintech……….they’re geopolitical tools.
Every USDC or USDT token in circulation represents demand for U.S. Treasuries. Today, stablecoin issuers collectively hold over US $180 billion in short-term Treasuries…….roughly 1–2 % of all outstanding T-bills and that figure could exceed US $500 billion to US $1 trillion by 2030 if adoption continues at its current pace. Every cross-border transaction in USDC or USDT reinforces dollar dominance. The more the world builds on these rails, the more “digital dollarization” spreads.
China bet on control. The U.S. bet on competition.
History tells us which one wins.
Why This Matters for Investors
This convergence……..AI, tokenization, and stablecoins—isn’t about hype cycles. It’s about structural change.
Just as the internet digitised knowledge and social networks digitised communication, we’re now digitising trust and value exchange.
That means the next generation of wealth creation won’t come from speculation………it’ll come from owning the infrastructure:
- The protocols that settle AI-to-AI payments
- The networks that tokenize real-world assets
- The algorithms that allocate capital 24/7
If AI is the mind of the exponential economy, stablecoins are its bloodstream.
The Bottom Line
The future of money won’t look like a “bank account.” It’ll look like an API.
AI will earn, spend, and invest at the speed of thought. Stablecoins will settle those flows instantly and transparently. And investors who understand that shift early will ride the same exponential curve that turned the internet’s “boring plumbing” into trillion-dollar empires.
When people dismiss stablecoins as unexciting, remember this: TCP/IP was boring, too. Until it powered everything.
If you’ve been following TheBucket for a while, you’ll see the throughline:
Technology eats the world → compounding demands 12% returns → stablecoins unlock the next phase of capitalism.
The difference now is speed. And this time, the machines are driving.
TheBucket 