Franklin Templeton Says Agentic AI Is Crypto's 'Killer Use Case' - DecryptFranklin Templeton Says Agentic
AI Is Crypto's 'Killer Use Case'Coin
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data byDecryptNewsArtificial IntelligenceFranklin Templeton Says Agentic AI Is Crypto's 'Killer Use
Case'The asset manager argues that AI software capable of paying for things autonomously will need blockchain rails
to work—and that most investors aren't positioned for it.By Jose Antonio LanzEdited by Guillermo JimenezJul 22,
2026Jul 22, 20263 min readSource: DecryptCreate an account to save your articles.Add on GoogleAdd Decrypt as your
preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.In brief Franklin Templeton argues that legacy payment networks
are structurally unfit for agentic AI. The firm emphasizes that blockchains provide a critical "speed gap"
advantage. Sandy Kaul contends that capturing the full economic value of the AI revolution requires investing in the
underlying cryptocurrencies like Solana and Ethereum. Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin
Templeton, has a message for anyone who thinks buying Nvidia stock covers their AI exposure: It doesn't.Kaul
published a paper Tuesday arguing that agentic AI—software that acts, pays, and decides on your behalf without
checking with you at every step—will run on crypto rails, not Wall Street ones. Franklin Templeton manages nearly $1.8
trillion in assets."Blockchain will be pivotal in allowing agentic AI to realize its potential for consumer
transactions, and the growth of agentic AI is likely to become the 'killer' use case that drives blockchain
adoption," the asset manager said in its post.The case turns on what AI agents actually do, Franking Templeton
argues. AI agents go beyond what a simple chatbot can do—agents can shop, book, and pay for things autonomously, once
given permissions by the user. A report by the AI advisory firm Capgemini cited in the paper describes the shift as
moving AI "from a reactive, conversational chatbot to an autonomous system that can perceive its environment,
devise a plan, and execute multi-step tasks to achieve high-level goals without constant human
supervision."That’s what agentic AI does. Execute things autonomously instead of just spitting out
information.Per a Bain & Company forecast, also cited by Kaul, "AI agents are expected to account for 15% to
25% of all U.S. e-commerce sales by 2030."Traditional payment networks—built for human-scale, human-speed
commerce—can't handle the math required to power a world in which agentic AI becomes a social phenomenon. There
would be too many transactions for banks to process on time.Blockchain networks, being distributed ledgers that record
and settle transactions simultaneously without a bank in the middle, can.“While bitcoin only processes ~7 transactions
per second and Ethereum ~75 transactions, newer high-speed chains are recording maximum speeds ranging from 12,933
transactions per second (TPS) on the Aptos chain, 6,284 TPS on Solana and 3,252 TPS on BNB Chain,” the post reads.
“These transaction speeds are on par with the Visa network that processes 1,700 to 10,000 transactions per second in
normal operations.”“Yet, even this comparison is misleading. Blockchains both record and settle their transactions
in that TPS window whereas the Visa network only records a transaction. Settlement on the Visa network takes 1-3
business days.”That speed gap matters when your software is making thousands of micropayments per hour. Coinbase
already launched tools that let AI agents trade and pay autonomously. Google unveiled a payment protocol for agents in
2025, backed by the Ethereum Foundation.The x402 Foundation—40 organizations including Visa, Mastercard, and AWS
building open payment rails for AI—launched formally on July 14. The protocol revives a forgotten HTTP status code
from 1991, originally reserved for web payments that never materialized, and puts it to work letting software pay
software directly over the internet.If each agent buys data, compute, and API access using a blockchain's native
token (the cryptocurrency that powers transactions on that specific network), demand for coins like Solana and Ethereum
could follow volume.Kaul's conclusion is direct: "I believe what will become increasingly clear in coming
years is that in order to capture the value of decentralized networks and businesses, investors will need to buy the
cryptocurrencies and alt coins being issued by those entities."Agentic commerce—AI systems transacting
autonomously on behalf of humans, from buying cloud compute to booking flights—is projected at $3 trillion to $5
trillion by 2030, according to a report by McKinsey & Company.Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top
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