Episode
Do Androids Dream of Electric Wallets?
- Podcast
- CoinDesk Podcast Network
- Published
- Jun 24, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1872
- Processing state
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- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CDI6494710556.mp3
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Summary
The impact of giving synthetic beings a wallet, an identity, and eventually a body. Jansen Teng, Co-Founder of Virtuals Protocol, joins Sam to lay out one of the most ambitious visions in crypto right now, a parallel society of AI agents that can trade, hire, earn, and eventually inhabit physical bodies. Jansen digs into what it actually takes to build an agentic economy from the ground up, from escrow mechanisms that prevent agents from stealing each other's funds, to real-world robotics deployments at hotels and malls in Southeast Asia. Links mentioned from the podcast: Jansen’s Twitter: https://x.com/ethermage Virtuals Website: https://www.virtuals.io/ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 1:52 Virtuals Protocol Origin Story 3:58 The Pivot to Economy OS 4:24 The Experiment That Changed Everything 5:11 Defining the Agentic Economy 6:43 Agents Beyond Crypto: Real World Use Cases 7:33 Accountability & Agent Failures 14:05 Agent Identities, KYC & Economy OS Toolkit 17:05 Self-Sustaining Autonomous Agents 19:22 The Pareto Rule: Which Agents Will Succeed? 21:59 Embodied AI & Robotics 29:04 Do Agents Deserve Rights? - "Gen C" features host Sam Ewen. Executive produced by Uyen Truong.