Arthur Hayes Declares AI Agents Will Power Next Economic Wave at TOKEN2049

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes forecast a major economic shift at Singapore's TOKEN2049 conference, declaring that autonomous AI agents will become the driving force of the next phase of human commerce and finance. Speaking at the world's largest crypto event on October 7, Hayes, now CEO of Flop Labs and CIO of Maelstrom, underscored a conviction he has maintained throughout 2026: while AI infrastructure may face a genuine bubble driven by $1.5 trillion in data center financing, the agentic economy itself represents a genuine and rapidly materializing frontier.