Recently, Wall Street research firm Citrini Research released a thought experiment report titled "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis," sparking widespread discussion in the market. The core deduction of the report points to an extremely cold business reshuffling logic: AI Agents will completely eliminate "friction" in human interaction, thereby destroying all old business empires built on information asymmetry and intermediary models.
Coincidentally, just as this Wall Street "apocalypse report" went viral online, Justin Sun, a iconic figure in the Web3 industry, also made quite eye-catching statements on social media. He declared 2026 as "the time for miracles to happen" and even urged young people: "If you can chat with AI, don't chat with humans... fully embrace the future!"
In the eyes of the public, this might be just another one of Sun's characteristically flamboyant "traffic stunts." But if we peel back the emotional surface and compare these remarks with the macro deductions of the "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis," we discover a thought-provoking truth: the "collapse of the old order" that Wall Street fears in its macro models is precisely the "Web4.0 new era" that Sun, in his micro-actions,极力推崇s and attempts to accelerate embracing.
Facing the same future, pessimists see an abyss, while Justin Sun sees a ladder to the singularity.
Computing Power, Electricity, and Token: The Fated Convergence of AI and Crypto
The picture of "friction extinction" depicted in the "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" is essentially an extremely cold, AI-driven disintermediation revolution.
The report sharply points out that when omniscient and omnipotent AI Agents can perform supply-demand matching, execute transactions, and provide services instantly with near-zero cost, the moats upon which modern businesses survive will be completely breached.
For a long time, countless business models, from traditional financial intermediaries and advertising distribution platforms to law firms and consulting agencies that charge high fees, have essentially parasitized human cognitive limitations, decision-making delays, and information blind spots. Once AI flattens these artificially created "frictions," these old empires will inevitably collapse like dominoes.
This trend coincides remarkably with the historical resonance of the "decentralization" banner held high by blockchain since its inception.
If the Web3 movement that emerged over a decade ago attempted to dismantle the "trust monopoly" of centralized institutions through cryptography and distributed ledgers at the underlying architectural level, then the rise of AI Agents today is a more thorough and efficient way to directly remove the necessity of "trust" itself in many scenarios—because intelligent agents can not only automatically verify facts but also autonomously complete value exchanges.
A deeper alignment lies in the fact that the material foundation supporting this dual revolution is entirely homologous.
Whether it's the inference tokens generated by AI or the crypto tokens in blockchain networks, behind them lies a long-underestimated yet incredibly solid physical truth: they are both digital incarnations of electricity.
Every inference by a large AI model consumes real computing power; the confirmation of every on-chain transaction, the execution of every smart contract, also relies on the continuous energy burned by miners or validator nodes. Tokens are not magic; they are vouchers of energy conversion, the value projection of electricity traversing chips, algorithms, and protocols into the digital world. In this light, it forms a perfect闭环 with Sun's previous assertion: "Short-term lack of chips, long-term lack of energy, forever lack of storage."
Thus, we see two seemingly opposing yet homologous forces converging: on one side, capital elites foresee the collapse of their own power structures in model projections; on the other, crypto natives actively welcome a new civilizational protocol without intermediaries, friction, or redundancy in code and slogans. This narrative of the "post-intermediary era," co-written by AI and blockchain, has perhaps just begun.
Why is AI Destined to Choose Crypto for Settlement?
However, this grand historical convergence is not merely a resonance at the philosophical and physical levels. When the narrative lands on specific business operations, an extremely practical problem looms before AI: in this new world about to be taken over by machine execution, who will provide financial services for these disembodied "silicon-based life forms"?
Centralized payment networks are designed for "humans."
McKinsey divides AI-driven business automation into six levels. Levels 0 to 4 can still operate within the existing financial system because transactions are always linked to human identity. But at Level 5, agents begin to transact directly with other agents without human instruction. At this point, there is no "human identity" to inherit, nor can they rely on traditional KYC processes; payments must be programmable, condition-triggered, settled in milliseconds, and the agent's reputation must be portable across platforms. Blockchain thus becomes indispensable.
AI has no physical form, let alone the ability to hold an ID card and queue for KYC. For them, a string of an asymmetrically encrypted private key is an account; a blockchain that enables second-level settlement, near-zero fees, and supports programmable smart contracts is the perfect clearinghouse.
The "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" contains a very realistic deduction: The room for price matching and information aggregation is ultimately limited. Once agents start transacting with each other, the most direct and effective path is to eliminate various handling fees. They begin to seek payment methods faster and cheaper than credit cards. Most eventually choose to settle using stablecoins via Solana or Ethereum Layer 2 networks, where transactions are almost instant, with fees as low as a fraction of a cent.
Precisely for this reason, crypto wallets are destined to become the "native banks" for AI Agents.
This also completely shatters the long-standing stereotypical perception of Crypto: issuing tokens is not just for secondary market speculation. In an AI-dominated future, crypto tokens and peer-to-peer payments will truly settle as the underlying financial infrastructure for high-frequency collaboration among intelligent agents.
Justin Sun's All-in Conspiracy: Where Does the Confidence and Ambition Come From?
Justin Sun's choice to bet on Web4.0 is backed by extremely meticulous business logic and strategic imperative.
First, Tron's "Stablecoin Hegemony" is the natural settlement layer for Web4.0.
As is well known, the Tron TRON network carries the largest circulation of USDT globally. As mentioned before, the core of Web4.0 is payment interaction between machines. AI needs a payment network that is fast, has low fees, and possesses immense liquidity. Tron's USDT payment network perfectly meets the underlying financial needs of AI Agents. Sun simply needs to build a set of payment APIs on the Tron network for AI to seamlessly call, and he can continue to profit effortlessly in the Web4.0 era.
Second, finding a breakthrough point in the "post-Web3 era."
Traditional Web3.0 has entered a存量博弈 (stock game), lacking new breakout stories. Meanwhile, AI has become the world's most certain and capital-rich incremental track. Sun敏锐地意识到 (sharply realizes) that the fate of Crypto must be tied to AI. By "All in Web4.0," he can channel the AI funds and attention from the traditional tech circle back to the crypto market. Tron previously established a $100 million AI development fund, a clear signal of preparing for Web4.0.
Third, establishing a closed loop for the "decentralized network."
Sun holds BitTorrent (decentralized storage/transmission), the Tron public chain (underlying settlement), and Huobi's massive crypto user base. If decentralized computing power and AI models are integrated, he has the opportunity to build a full-stack Web4.0 infrastructure that does not rely on Amazon AWS or Google Cloud.
The irony of history often lies in the fact that the night watchmen of the old order are still calculating the losses from the城墙倒塌 (collapse of the city walls), while the barbarians of the new world have already laid the foundation on the ruins.
This transformation co-written by AI and crypto is not yet complete, but the direction is clear. The real question is no longer whether AI will reshape business, but who can preemptively occupy the core position of the infrastructure in this restructuring.
