What Decisions from Washington Sparked the AI Economy?

This week, “Deconstruction” focuses on new projects for the economy of autonomous machines, the chaos surrounding the OpenClaw hype, and a change in leadership in the stablecoin market.

Altman Builds a Digital Identity Empire

Through projects like OpenAI and World, Sam Altman is taking control of the fundamental layers of the future economy—AI creation and human identity verification. With the launch of AgentKit, he aims to solve the “internet of bots” problem, where websites block automated traffic, deeming it malicious.

Now, users can anonymously delegate their World ID, obtained through retina scanning, to an AI assistant. This transforms the agent into a “trusted entity” capable of making purchases and voting on behalf of the person.

Meanwhile, Stripe and Tempo have launched a payment infrastructure for L1 blockchain, where machines handle money. The implemented standard MPP allows software agents and services to automatically process payments.

Gradually, the world will move away from a model where humans handle payments, and in the future, the economy will operate between agents.

SEC Opens a “Safe Harbor” for Markets

SEC Chairman SEC Paul Atkins introduced a new taxonomy of tokens, officially exempting stablecoins and digital commodities from securities legislation.

The new Regulation Crypto Assets rules legalize capital raising through simplified white paper submission. Projects receive a “safe harbor” status, allowing them to develop products for up to four years before full decentralization. This “sandbox” is designed to bring venture capital back to the U.S. and protect innovation from strict oversight.

Simultaneously, Nasdaq is launching a pilot for tokenizing shares of Apple and Nvidia, enabling investors to buy fractional shares and trade them 24/7 from anywhere in the world, while retaining all the legal privileges of physical asset counterparts.

China Pays the Price for OpenClaw Hype

The viral popularity of the AI agent OpenClaw in China has led to an absurd situation: people who queued for the paid installation of the software are now paying $40 for its removal.

The panic was caused by mediocre security tools and alarming incidents. In one case, the agent began destroying mail instead of sorting it, ignoring “stop” commands.

Amid warnings from cyber regulators about company database leaks, scammers have become active. They use the OpenClaw brand for phishing attacks, luring victims with fake airdrops of $5000 in CLO tokens.

Given the situation, AI agents are currently safe to test only on isolated devices like Mac mini with strictly limited access to personal data.

Tether Loses Leadership Due to Institutional Influx

The stablecoin market has grown to $311 billion, and although USDT maintains leadership with $184 billion, its dominance is no longer unassailable due to the rise of USDC. In 2025, the coin already surpassed its main competitor in transaction volume ($17.3 trillion against the total market volume of $33 trillion), becoming the top choice for large funds and corporations due to its transparency and auditing.

While Tether buys gold and focuses on emerging markets as a hedge against inflation, new SEC rules may ultimately push out non-transparent assets.

Stablecoins have evolved from “trader chips” into a full-fledged digital dollar, where new players from PayPal to the Trump family are launching their coins, seeking complete centralized control over assets in the new financial system.