Artificial intelligence agents will become more important than humans on the internet within the next decade, says Charles Hoskinson, a shift that has forced Google, Facebook and Amazon to react.
Hoskinson also said during a keynote speech at Consensus 2026 in Miami on Wednesday that “by 2035, the majority of searches, commerce and activity on the Internet will be conducted by artificial intelligence agents rather than humans.”
He said the change threatened existing business models. “Amazon, Google, Facebook, they’re afraid of the agency revolution,” Hoskinson said, adding that companies are investing heavily because “all their business models are going to be disrupted.”
Hoskinson explained that AI agents won’t click on ads or have brand preferences, which “threatens the ad-driven model of platforms like Google, Amazon and Facebook.”
“Why do you think Google is interested in x402?” he asked the audience about the Coinbase-backed protocol that enables artificial intelligence agents and applications to make direct, programmatic payments over the internet using stablecoins and cryptocurrency rails.
Hoskinson noted that this shift will change how cryptocurrencies are used, adding that artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly handle tasks such as due diligence, trade execution, and interacting with decentralized finance.
Hoskinson’s AI agent predictions echo those of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who said that “soon, the number of AI agents conducting transactions will exceed humans,” while Binance founder Changpeng Zhao predicted that “AI agents will handle 1 million times more payments than humans.”
Hoskinson, on the other hand, said that AI agents are “the best thing that’s ever happened to cryptocurrency” because it simplifies the user experience.
The Cardano founder warned cryptocurrency users against relying on intermediaries rather than maintaining direct control over their assets, which he said was the principle on which cryptocurrencies were built.
“You have to own your data. You have to own your identity. You have to own your money,” he said, adding that users are “outsourcing it to custodial wallets,” “permissioned networks” and “third parties they will regret trusting when their accounts are closed.”
He also pointed to the fragmentation of the blockchain ecosystem as an obstacle to progress, saying it slowed down development. “Eleven million tokens have been issued over the years. We have enough,” Hoskinson said. “What I want is collaboration. What I want is a mission to be accomplished.”
Hoskinson said user experience remains a key issue limiting user adoption, arguing that the current cryptocurrency onboarding process is complex and error-prone. “This is what the user experience will be in 2026,” he said. “Is this like a product you’d want to use?”
He said technologies such as account abstraction and chain abstraction can simplify how users interact with crypto systems while maintaining control over assets and identities.
Hoskinson highlighted the changing attitude of financial institutions, noting that JPMorgan has moved away from restricting crypto-related activities to developing blockchain-based products. “When we first started, JPMorgan closed people’s bank accounts and now they have a blockchain product,” he said.
