I have been listening for the past hour or so to Emad Mostaque, the founder of Intelligent Internet, discuss among other things how money will evolve in terms of use and creation in an artificial intelligence world. I decided to tune in after doing a little prior contemplation on my own as to how currencies will be managed in an AI age. Specifically, how will governments manage the validation of their currency as artificial intelligence pervades society.
So far, the focus of most Americans has been on the impact AI is having on employment in the tech sector. All one has to do is visit YouTube and listen to people describe their layoff experience or their frustration with finding that first job right after college. Not too many people are talking about the potential of a new type of currency that they may have to use over the next ten to twenty years.
All governments are jealous of threats to the use and value of their currencies, the US being no exception. I gather that on the surface maintaining the relevance of the greenback was part of the rationale behind the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for the U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act recently passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Trump.
I could look at the GENIUS Act as a way for the United States to get ahead of any competition to its currency or even a digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve System (The European Central Bank is waiting on legislative approval before issuing their digital currency). But the GENIUS Act may serve to only slow down the entry of new bankers into the financial system, namely those information broker giants i.e., Amazon, Facebook, or Google, who sit on troves of data sets and large language models that they can make available to back their own digital tokens.
If bitcoin, as Mr. Mostaque points out, was about turning electricity into currency, large language models and artificial intelligence could be about turning human behavior and data stored on to graphics processing units into the reserves that back digital tokens.
I can see a currency exchange market where an individual exchanges a token backed by his unique data and information for an Amazon token backed by its collection of data. Being a global marketplace, Amazon’s token could give the holder access to services and products found only on Amazon. To provide additional exclusivity, Amazon could issue tokens only to select participants in its currency trade.
For added exclusivity, providers of luxury products could restrict the sale of these products only to those customers holding an Amazon token. Restriction on the part of Amazon would be necessary to elevate the value of its coin.
In addition, Amazon could get around the taxation issue by obtaining a stablecoin issuer license pursuant to the GENIUS Act and convert its coins to dollars come time to remit taxes to the U.S.
From a speculation perspective, it is too early to tell what that would look like.
Alton Drew
22 August 2025
For a legal and policy analysis, reach out to me at altondrew@altondrew.com.
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