Ray Fernandez, Espacio Media Incubator
As the AI Agent marketplace takes off, traditional banking and regulators are playing catch-up with decentralized technologies that are innovating at a faster pace.
AI agents are now handling crypto wallets on behalf of users daily through the x402 infrastructure developed by Coinbase, using the Model Content Protocol (MCP) with crypto flow volumes concentrating on the Solana chain, and settling payments mostly in the stablecoin USDC.
Putting an exact number on how much money AI agents are moving through the blockchain is just one of the transparency and compliance challenges that regulators have. Some reports show that x402 transactions have already surpassed the $50 million milestone, with agents operating seamlessly across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Polygon. Other reports say AI agents processed 2.364 million stablecoin payments in a month, with cumulative volume reaching $49.564 million.
These transactions are but a fraction of what is coming. “AI agents and automated payments could reach a scale that crypto monitoring systems built for human-paced markets cannot handle,” Elliptic CEO Simone Maini recently told Coindesk.
The World Economic Forum estimated that AI agents could be worth $236 billion by 2034, as the organization called for new “Know Your Customer” frameworks to adapt to the market. The “Know Your Agent” framework, the World Economic Forum says, can help consolidate identity and safety protocols.
While in the U.S. the CLARITY Act – which cleared the Senate on May 14 – aims to build the foundational framework that will open up the decentralized global market to traditional banks, Sygnum became the first regulated Swiss bank to use AI agents for live on-chain transactions in Europe.
With its new AI agent technology, built in-house by the AI@Sygnum team using an MCP server and Anthropic’s Claude as the underlying AI model, Sygnum is looking to check all the compliance and security boxes while balancing innovation and traditional banking.
The AI agent developed by the Swiss bank allows clients to retain custody, consent, and control at every step.
“Sygnum’s human-led, AI-augmented approach comes at a time when regulators increasingly view the potential for AI agents to act beyond the client’s intended scope as a risk for financial institutions,” the Swiss Bank said in the official press release.
Sygnum’s new AI agent operates in Europe, where laws set a high bar on AI governance, user data, risk management, transparency, and accountability.
While the bank’s AI agent is not currently available to clients – and deployment will be subject to full regulatory, compliance, and security reviews and approvals – the move represents a clear sign of the direction in which traditional banking is moving to expand into the new AI global agent market.
“Connecting AI agents to wallets is foundational to where finance is heading,” said Thomas Frei, Head of AI and Data Analytics and AI@Sygnum lead at Sygnum Bank.
The next decade will see agents transacting, settling, and interacting with markets on behalf of clients, Frie explained.
“The key challenge is doing this in a way that preserves – and even enhances – bank-grade consent, custody and trust,” he stressed.
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Aurthor:
