Chalom discusses how retail investors are now able to access and manage their own digital treasury desk.
By Joseph Chalom|Edited by Betsy Farber May 22, 2026, 2:57 p.m. 5 min readMake preferred on (Getty Images/J Studios)The upcoming shift in financial services is not driven by merely improved applications or cost-effective brokerages based on outdated systems. Instead, it represents a fundamental transformation of a system overloaded with middlemen and slow processes, propelled by three converging trends: stablecoins acting as perpetual digital currency, the tokenization of tangible assets including stocks, bonds, and real estate, and the emergence of autonomous AI agents capable of managing finances. Collectively, these developments are set to equip every investor with a powerful financial assistant.
Historically, effective treasury management has been reserved for large institutions and wealthy individuals. Major asset management firms employ dedicated teams to ensure that every dollar is actively utilized, every investment yields returns, and all voting aligns with their principles. Retail investors have not had similar access — but this is on the brink of transformation.
Imagine having a digital treasury agent: perpetually active, never resting, executing your financial preferences with precision. This agent would keep track of your cash flow in real time, directing idle funds into interest-bearing assets that reflect the current market conditions. It would manage your stablecoins and tokenized investments, lending them out to earn passive income just as institutions have historically done. Furthermore, it would cast votes on your shares across numerous holdings seamlessly, based on the values you establish. The two components of your financial strategy—spending and investing—would finally operate as an integrated system rather than as distinct elements.
The financial stakes are enormous. American households collectively hold around $6 trillion in checking accounts, which could rise to nearly $15 trillion when including savings and low-interest time deposits, much of which earns minimal interest compared to prevailing money-market rates. This inefficiency costs U.S. retail savers over $180 billion annually in lost interest. Moreover, the lucrative market of securities lending primarily benefits institutions rather than the retail investors who own trillions in stocks. Currently, retail shareholders exercise voting rights on less than a third of their shares, in stark contrast to nearly 90 percent for institutional investors, leaving a significant portion of corporate governance unutilized.
To bridge this gap, agents must operate on infrastructure that aligns with their capabilities: immediate, programmable, continuous, and accessible around the clock. Three emerging technologies now provide this necessary framework. Stablecoins serve as the cash layer, offering digitally native dollars that settle in seconds without needing traditional banking hours or intermediaries for cross-border transactions. Tokenization allows the transformation of stocks, bonds, funds, and real estate into programmable assets with fractional ownership and rapid settlement. Decentralized finance (DeFi) supplies the execution layer, enabling lending, borrowing, market-making, and yield generation accessible to any agent at any time, without human intervention. This contrasts sharply with the existing market structure, where transactions can take days to settle, money transfers are restricted to banking hours, and portfolio adjustments occur quarterly at most. Autonomous agents operate outside of these constraints, executing transactions continuously at machine speed across various time zones and asset classes.
These foundational technologies are gaining acceptance beyond cryptocurrency enthusiasts. In December 2025, Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein from BlackRock asserted in The Economist that tokenization represents a significant advancement in market infrastructure, likening it to the internet's early days in 1996 when Amazon had just sold $16 million in books. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has projected the stablecoin market to expand from approximately $330 billion today to $3 trillion by 2030. Additionally, TD Cowen anticipates that the tokenized asset sector could reach $100 trillion by the decade's end.
These agents will soon manage vast resources. An estimated $80 to $100 trillion is expected to be transferred from Baby Boomers to their heirs in what is being termed the Great Wealth Transfer, marking the largest intergenerational capital movement in history. The new generation trusts technology over traditional financial institutions and is wary of intermediaries that charge fees for services that software can execute in real-time at minimal cost. The entity that establishes the infrastructure for these agents stands to manage the largest capital pool in history, controlling fees, recommendations, and insights into every financial transaction. This is why major financial institutions are competing to dominate this space before it can be harnessed on a truly neutral platform.
Stripe, which processed $1.9 trillion in payments last year, has introduced a blockchain focused on stablecoins and a protocol for machine-to-machine transactions. Visa, Mastercard, and Google have each launched competing standards for agent payments in the last year. These initiatives are not mere product launches; they represent strategic moves in a race to control the infrastructure that will facilitate the movement of funds for countless households. The platform that prevails will dictate transaction fees, gain insights into agent decision-making, and influence which products agents recommend and where they allocate cash.
The history of transformative infrastructure consistently reveals a key lesson. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel. The advents of Web 1 and Web 2 led to the emergence of Google and Meta. In each scenario, the entity that controlled the infrastructure captured the majority of the value generated. The agentic economy poses similar risks on a larger scale since this infrastructure will not only transport goods or information but will also autonomously manage money and invest capital on behalf of billions. If the financial rails are proprietary, the agent in your pocket will serve the interests of the company that created them rather than yours.
A singular architecture should not be owned or unduly influenced by any single entity: Ethereum is positioned as such, boasting over a decade of reliable operation and the institutional trust necessary to back it. The standards for machine-to-machine commerce are already established there. The open-source payments protocol X402 allows agents to conduct stablecoin micropayments without the constraints typical of card systems. This year alone, over 167 million X402 transactions have occurred between agents. ERC-8004 provides a verifiable identity framework that allows agents from different organizations to transact without prior mutual trust, fostering open economies governed by shared rules instead of a single platform operator. Together, these components enable autonomous finance to operate on neutral, decentralized infrastructure.
Institutions that recognize and adapt to this shift early, building on decentralized frameworks, will not only navigate the transition successfully but will also shape the future of finance for the generation that will inherit it. While this may seem threatening to the current financial order, it also presents a significant opportunity for individual retail investors that has not been seen in generations.
OpinionNote: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.
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