Xiao Feng: The AI-driven intelligent agent economy must be built on a new generation of financial infrastructure.

According to Mars Finance, on May 29th, Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey Group, stated at the "Hong Kong Digital Finance Summit 2026," co-hosted by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Institute of Finance, Tsinghua University Institute for Global Development, and Caijing Magazine, that the true realization of the AI intelligent agent economy requires a new generation of on-chain financial infrastructure. He also predicted that the scale of on-chain finance will reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion within the next three years. Xiao Feng stated that when AI develops to the stage of intelligent agent collaboration, it will give rise to massive amounts of high-frequency, low-amount, automated payment scenarios. For example, AI intelligent agents may frequently engage in real-time calls and settlements at the level of 5 cents or 10 cents, while the traditional banking system, due to its cost structure and account system limitations, struggles to support such micro-payment needs. In contrast, blockchain, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits can achieve the infrastructure capability that makes "the marginal cost of paying 10 cents almost the same as paying $100 million." Based on this trend, Xiao Feng further proposed that the future AI intelligent agent economy will form a three-layer structure: the first layer is the "means of production layer," including computing power, data, and new means of production such as AI tokens; the second layer is the "transaction medium layer," where payments and collaborations between AI intelligent agents will mainly rely on the digital currency system; and the third layer is the "asset layer," where AI economic activities themselves will continue to create new digital asset categories. Xiao Feng believes that this is also a significant opportunity for Hong Kong to develop digital finance. Hong Kong possesses three unique advantages in the field of digital assets: its common law system is more inclusive of digital assets and financial innovation; as a top international financial center, its regulators, government, and academia are highly sensitive to global trends and can quickly capture and respond to changes; and under the wave of economic digitalization, innovation in asset and currency forms is inevitable, and Hong Kong's pioneering introduction of virtual asset regulatory policies several years ago is a testament to its foresight. When discussing the tokenization trend, Xiao Feng pointed out that the essential needs of finance have remained unchanged for thousands of years, but technology continues to drive the evolution of exchange mediums—from seashells and paper money to mobile internet payments and then to tokenized currencies, what changes is the form of value exchange, but what remains unchanged is the need for value exchange itself. He predicts that "within 3 years, the scale of on-chain finance will reach 3 trillion to 5 trillion US dollars, and the complete on-chain finance market will also undergo a qualitative change from quantitative change."