The chief investment officer of the Maelstrom Fund family office and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is saying that artificial intelligence (AI) agents and crypto assets are a natural fit.

In a Bankless interview, Hayes says that AI memecoins are a “completely new life force” that is entering the cryptocurrency industry.

“I think that AI agents will be able to fill all anti-money laundering and know-your-customer forms, so they’re all digitized anyway, right? They can fake an image, they can deepfake s**t, they’ll have big accounts for sure. But again I think … to like [engage in] commerce that’s frictionless, that’s cheap enough for them, crypto makes the most sense.

Now, whether they create their own cryptocurrency, I don’t f*****g know but I think this is an interesting way to start. And that’s why I think there’s a lot of hype around these AI meme coins.”

According to the Maelstrom Fund CIO, AI agents are also likely to use Bitcoin (BTC) since it is more “intrinsically” related to them and it is “something they can understand.”

“If I’m an AI [agent], why would I use some coin, some fiat currency that lasts 100 years and dies every time a bunch of humans get together and decide to debase it because they want to? That’s the history of all fiat currencies over the last 10,000 years.

So knowing that they’ve literally been trained on everything that we’ve ever done and written and they know our history why would you buy a dollar or a euro or a yen? It will not exist in 100 years. We know this. But Bitcoin theoretically could.”