ANAND VASHISHTHA

The real convergence of AI and crypto is not about giving machines wallets. It is about deciding what machines are allowed to do. For most of crypto’s history, the idea of an autonomous machine economy arrived too early. Projects imagined AI services discovering one another, exchanging money, building reputation and collaborating through decentralized markets years before modern AI agents existed. The vision was not necessarily wrong. The actor was missing. Early “agents” were mostly narrow models, bots ...

The web browser has always been designed for humans. We read text, recognize buttons, understand menus, fill forms, and decide where to click. AI agents currently have to do much of the same thing artificially: inspect the DOM, analyze screenshots, locate elements, click buttons, wait for page changes, and hope the interface has not changed. That works — but it is a fragile abstraction. A checkout button moving should not break an AI agent’s ability to buy something. A redesigned form should not force an...

The AI search company’s retreat from sponsored placements reveals why advertising becomes more complicated when software gives one synthesized answer. In November 2024, Perplexity began experimenting with advertising in the United States. Its format was relatively restrained: sponsored follow-up questions beneath a response and paid media beside it. Perplexity said the advertisements would be clearly labelled, that sponsors would not write or edit generated answers, and that advertising would not change ...