Xiao Feng: The AI Agent Economy Must Be Built on a New Generation of Financial Infrastructure

05/29 09:40

On May 29, Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey Group, stated at the "Hong Kong Digital Finance Summit 2026" co-hosted by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's Finance Research Institute, Tsinghua University's Global Institute for Collaborative Development, and Caijing Magazine, that the true realization of the AI agent economy needs to be built on a new generation of on-chain financial infrastructure. He also predicted that within the next three years, the scale of on-chain finance will reach between $3 trillion and $5 trillion. Xiao Feng mentioned that as AI develops to the stage of agent collaboration, it will give rise to a vast number of high-frequency, low-value, automated payment scenarios. For instance, real-time calls and settlements between AI agents may frequently occur at levels of 5 cents or 10 cents, while the traditional banking system, due to cost structures and account system limitations, struggles to support such micro-payment demands. In contrast, blockchain, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits can achieve infrastructure capabilities where 'the marginal cost of paying 10 cents is almost the same as paying $100 million.' Based on this trend, Xiao Feng further proposed that the future AI agent economy will form a three-layer structure: the first layer is the 'production material layer,' including new types of production materials such as computing power, data, and AI tokens; the second layer is the 'transaction medium layer,' where payments and collaborations between AI agents will primarily rely on digital currency systems; the third layer is the 'asset layer,' where AI economic activities will continue to create new categories of digital assets. Xiao Feng believes this represents a significant opportunity for Hong Kong to develop digital finance. Hong Kong has three unique advantages in the field of digital assets: the common law system is more inclusive of digital assets and financial innovation; as a top international financial center, regulators, the government, and academia are highly sensitive to global trends and can quickly capture and respond to changes; and under the wave of economic digitalization, innovation in asset and currency forms is inevitable. Hong Kong's proactive introduction of virtual asset regulatory policies several years ago reflects this foresight. Discussing the trend of tokenization, Xiao Feng pointed out that the essential demand for finance has not changed for thousands of years, but technology continues to drive the evolution of exchange mediums—from shells and paper money to mobile internet payments and tokenized currencies. What changes is the form of value exchange, while the demand for value exchange itself remains constant. He anticipates, 'Within three years, the scale of on-chain finance will reach between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, and a complete on-chain financial market will bring about qualitative changes from quantitative changes.'

AlcistaBajistaMe gustaCompartir

Descargo de responsabilidad：El contenido anterior no representa las posiciones de HTX.，HTX no ofrece ninguna recomendación de trading.。