In the current global capital rush to pursue the AI industry and promote the valuation of high-tech giants, the market generally overlooks a core industry logic: artificial intelligence and blockchain are not two independent tracks, but two sides of a new round of technological revolution. In its latest research report, the veteran cryptocurrency institution Pantera Capital proposed that two major technologies are deeply integrated based on four pillars: payment settlement, decentralized identity, open collaboration system, and cross domain resource aggregation. AI is responsible for creating massive digital value, while blockchain undertakes the functions of property rights confirmation, settlement, and trusted landing. Currently, there is a historic divergence in valuation between the two, and cryptocurrency assets are in a value slump.

1、 Bottom level logic complementarity: AI creates increment, blockchain determines ownership, naturally adapts to industrial changes

From a technological perspective, AI and blockchain have irreplaceable complementary properties. Artificial intelligence continues to lower the marginal costs of content generation, intelligent agent research and development, and digital products, continuously creating massive digital assets and new economic entities - autonomous AI agents; Blockchain, with its cryptography and distributed ledger, solves the problems of digital asset ownership, trusted value circulation, and decentralized settlement, anchoring the scarcity of the digital world. Simply put, AI is responsible for value production, while blockchain is responsible for value ownership and circulation implementation.

Looking back at the history of global industrial development, every round of large-scale economic prosperity stems from the cross-border combination of two types of hard core technologies: steam engine+railway to get through the circulation of goods, power+manufacturing to innovate the production mode, and mobile Internet plus+smart phone to reconstruct the consumption scene. The current combination of AI and blockchain has replicated the laws of industrial transformation in the past. Both have the same underlying research and development, relying on mathematics and open-source community ecology for development. The talent circle is highly overlapping, and technological integration is an inevitable result of industrial evolution.

However, the pricing in the capital market is significantly lagging behind, and funds are unilaterally pouring into the AI track, resulting in a serious premium in sector valuations. The cryptocurrency market continues to be undervalued due to short-term market trends, creating a historic valuation gap and bringing about a rare window for layout.

2、 Four major landing pillars have been formed, and commercial projects have verified the integration logic

Pantera has completed a full industry chain layout around four major integration directions, and its investment targets have been commercialized and applied, which proves that AI cannot do without the underlying support of blockchain.

1. Machine native payment settlement: stablecoin+on chain system becomes the exclusive financial channel for intelligent agents

The traditional banking system, SWIFT, Fedwire, ACH and other clearing architectures are designed around the needs of natural persons, with high account opening thresholds, limited trading hours, and lengthy clearing links, which are completely unable to adapt to the programmatic, all-weather, millisecond level high-frequency trading needs of AI intelligent agents. The intelligent agent does not have a natural person identity and cannot open a bank account. On chain stablecoin settlement becomes the only feasible solution.

The Pantera heavy position project OpenFX uses stablecoins as its core settlement base, with an annual trading volume exceeding $60 billion. The team has made a clear prediction that AI agents will grow into the main traders in the foreign exchange market in the next decade; Alchemy, the leader in Web3 infrastructure, is known as the AWS of the blockchain field. It has built a full chain development tool for intelligent agent wallets and on chain execution layers, significantly reducing the development cost of AI projects accessing on chain finance and becoming the core infrastructure for AI+encryption implementation. BlackRock executives also support the view that cryptocurrency is a native currency designed specifically for the machine intelligence economy.

2. Decentralized identity: cracking AI forgery chaos and building a trusted system for human-machine differentiation

With the popularization of AIGC, deep forgery, and massive intelligent agents, how to distinguish real natural persons, robot programs, and AI generated content has become a must-have for the entire industry. Centralized identity systems such as passports and bank cards are highly susceptible to forgery and cannot adapt to the digital new world.

Pantera has laid out two benchmark projects, World (formerly Worldcoin) and TransCrypts, to fill in the gaps in the industry: World relies on iris biometric recognition and human identity verification protocol. Users generate encrypted World IDs through iris collection, and their identity data is hashed and uploaded to the chain. Currently, over 18 million real users have registered, ranking among the top public chains in the world; TransCrypts focuses on autonomous identity, allowing users to independently control credentials such as qualifications, income, and employment certificates on the blockchain, relying on cryptography to resist AI synthesized identity fraud. OpenAI founder Altman participated in the founding of the World project in his early years, anticipating the huge gap in global identity governance after the outbreak of AI.

3. Open Systems and Resource Aggregation: Building a Cross Agent Collaborative Base for Intelligent Agents

The large-scale operation of AI intelligent agents requires an open network that is decentralized, capable of automatic performance, and cross platform collaboration. Blockchain smart contracts can achieve automatic execution without human intervention and anchor rights and responsibilities, allowing massive intelligent agents to complete resource exchange and cooperation without third-party control, filling the gaps of centralized platform closure and monopoly, and forming the fourth major pillar of integration.

3、 Extreme valuation differentiation: AI foam is high, and crypto assets are wrongly killed by the market

Data shows that as of May 2026, the Pantera self-developed top AI enterprise index has a premium of 49% compared to the four-year long-term trend line, and the sector has entered the overbought range; On the other hand, Bitcoin has fallen by about 42% compared to its historical trend line. Although intelligent agents have long relied on blockchain finance and identity infrastructure, the two major related assets have emerged from extreme reverse trends, with valuation differentiation reaching a historical peak.

The one-sided pursuit of AI hardware and large model targets by funds neglects the essential encryption underlying layer for the landing of intelligent agents, resulting in a misestimation of the value of the encryption track. With the acceleration of the landing of intelligent agents, funds will gradually correct their cognition and complete the migration from the pure AI sector to the cross track of AI+blockchain.

4、 The industrial window period has arrived, and intelligent infrastructure is ushering in a golden age of entrepreneurship

From the perspective of industrial nodes, the integration of AI and blockchain is no longer a long-term concept. The entire chain infrastructure has been established, the regulatory environment has improved marginally, and the industry has officially entered the eve of demand explosion.

Pantera pointed out that entrepreneurs are focusing on four major sub directions: intelligent agent exclusive on chain finance, decentralized identity, AI generated content on chain certification and confirmation, and multi-agent on chain collaboration, which are at an excellent entry window. The investment experience gained over the past thirteen years of deep cultivation has also given Pantera a resource and analytical advantage in cross track project exploration.

Conclusion

AI brings about a productivity revolution, while blockchain fills the gaps in trust and settlement in the digital world. The integration of the two is the core theme of this wave of technology. The valuation fragmentation in the short-term market is just a temporary misconception. When AI agents move from concept to large-scale commercial use, and the demand for machine native on chain finance and decentralized identity is concentrated, undervalued encrypted assets will eventually face a reassessment of their value.