Why AI Is Crypto’s Biggest ‘Competitive’ Threat | Aaron Wright

Is crypto’s biggest rival artificial intelligence? 

As AI absorbs talent and capital, it’s not clear yet if crypto and AI are competing or converging but crypto’s focus on human agency may matter more than ever in an automated world.

Amanda Cassatt is joined by Aaron Wright, crypto lawyer, former Wikia general counsel and CEO of Tribute Labs, to unpack the battle between crypto and AI and what the explosive growth of stablecoins actually means for the U.S. dollar as both institutions and corporations look to gain exposure to crypto. 

Outside of the technological battle we’re seeing, Aaron believes we’re also undergoing a structural shift that’ll see the separation of the U.S. dollar from U.S. banks. He discusses the slow erosion of smaller national currencies, and the rise of open, permissionless financial infrastructure that anyone can access. What looks incremental today may ultimately reshape who controls money and how power flows in a dollar-dominated world.

The conversation spans across artificial intelligence, dollar hegemony, central bank authority, as well as the growing divide between institutional crypto and the onchain “trenches.”

Timestamps: 

00:00 – Cold Open: Stablecoins and the End of Dollar Hegemony

05:00 – Splitting the Dollar from the Banks

10:00 – Do Stablecoins Weaken Central Banks?

15:00 – Should Local Currencies Even Exist?

20:00 – The Paradox of American Decline

25:00 – Regulation, Law, and Crypto’s Lost Years

30:00 – Institutional Crypto vs. the Trenches

35:00 – Is Crypto Still About Technology?

40:00 – AI vs. Crypto

45:00 – Open Systems, Wikipedia, and Internet Decay

50:00 – KYC, Surveillance, and Enshittification

55:00 – Identity, Reputation, and ZK Proofs

1:00:00 – Crypto’s Endgame: Human Agency

Resources: 

Follow Aaron Wright @awrigh01 https://x.com/awrigh01

Learn more about Aaron's work: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2373233

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Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin  

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Substack: https://substack.com/@UCInZsV3L1nDGoFjxoNUnPQQ