Everyone seems to be speaking in regards to the Citrini Analysis report that despatched the market right into a tailspin yesterday. Buried in its 7,000 phrases of knowledge is a large purchase sign for Solana and Ethereum Layer 2s.
The report, entitled The 2028 International Intelligence Disaster, is a piece of fiction that explores a future state of affairs wherein AI disruption results in what it describes as a “unfavorable suggestions loop with no pure brake”.
JUNE 2028.
The S&P is down 38% from its highs. Unemployment simply printed 10.2%. Non-public credit score is unraveling. Prime mortgages are cracking. AI didn’t disappoint. It exceeded each expectation.
What occurred?https://t.co/JzzwCrbJgS— Citrini (@Citrini7) February 22, 2026
In brief, AI goes to displace white collar employees at an unprecedented charge. It ought to have been apparent, however we waited till 2028 for the penny to drop…
“It ought to have been clear all alongside {that a} single GPU cluster in North Dakota producing the output beforehand attributed to 10,000 white-collar employees in midtown Manhattan is extra financial pandemic than financial panacea. The speed of cash flatlined. The human-centric client financial system, 70% of GDP on the time, withered. We most likely may have figured this out sooner if we simply requested how a lot cash machines spend on discretionary items. (Trace: it’s zero.)
“AI capabilities improved, corporations wanted fewer employees, white collar layoffs elevated, displaced employees spent much less, margin strain pushed corporations to speculate extra in AI, AI capabilities improved…”
Right here’s what that appears like schematically:
Coming into an age of ample intelligence
There is no such thing as a self-correction as we might anticipate to see in a typical cyclical recession.
It goes one thing like this: building (or different financial exercise) slows, charges modify downwards, permitting companies to return to increasing output, till overproduction kicks in once more, and so forth.
Within the AI doom loop, AI improves, fewer employees are wanted, fewer employees imply much less spending, the financial system weakens, corporations put money into extra AI to guard margins, AI will get even higher, and the cycle repeats – there is no such thing as a pure break.
We thought it was a sectoral story. I’m not in Software program-as-a-Service (SaaS), so there’s no want to fret. However it’s greater than software program. Far more. It was a comforting notion that AI would usher in an period of artistic destruction, as seen in previous technological assaults on the outdated methods of doing issues.
Sure, AI will destroy jobs, however, as previously, new jobs and hitherto unimagined industries would emerge to switch them.
Bother is, based on Citrini’s state of affairs, AI is a narrative of human intelligence displacement. The complete white collar workforce is imperilled. It’s the consequence of ample intelligence.
The authors of the Cetrini report remind us that superior economies just like the US are service-based. The report breaks that down so everybody can perceive:
“The US financial system is a white-collar companies financial system. White-collar employees represented 50% of employment and drove roughly 75% of discretionary client spending. The companies and jobs that AI was chewing up weren’t tangential to the US financial system, they had been the US financial system.”
Sadly for all of us – white collar, blue collar, no matter – machines don’t purchase stuff.
AI brokers destroy intermediation – bye bye bank cards, hiya stablecoins
The report makes a sturdy case for a way client brokers will finish the age of intermediation.
AI brokers function autonomously on behalf of their human house owners, which suggests they will discover one of the best flight or lodge available on the market with ease as a result of they by no means get drained, don’t discover something monotonous or uninteresting, and by no means sleep.
BIG WARNING: AI COULD PUSH GLOBAL ECONOMY INTO A RECESSION THIS DECADE.
And this won’t occur by AI bubble burst, however relatively by AI changing into greater and higher.
It is a state of affairs laid out by Citrini of their report, and right here's why it’s best to listen:
Proper now, AI is… pic.twitter.com/FIu9PsZA2X— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) February 23, 2026
The times of corporations counting on our laziness or inertia are numbered. Add ‘vibe coding’ to the combination, and a brand new wave of startups can spin up supply companies apps in just a few weeks to compete with DoorDash et al, or automate workflow in a bespoke approach that matches your company wants extra performantly than say Monday. In all places, charges are being compressed to close zero.
After which we come to our buddies, the banks. Why pay charges to Mastercard and Amex when you should utilize a stablecoin operating on a low-fee blockchain like Solana, or an Ethereum Layer 2 like Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, or Polygon?
“As soon as brokers managed the transaction, they went on the lookout for greater paperclips.
“There was solely a lot price-matching and aggregating to do. The most important approach to repeatedly save the person cash (particularly when brokers began transacting amongst themselves) was to remove charges. In machine-to-machine commerce, the 2-3% card interchange charge grew to become an apparent goal.
“Brokers went on the lookout for sooner and cheaper choices than playing cards. Most settled on utilizing stablecoins through Solana or Ethereum L2s, the place settlement was near-instant and the transaction value was measured in fractions of a penny.”
And what agentic AI will do for stablecoins is also utilized to cross-border fee protocols like Ripple’s XRP Ledger, though it doesn’t get a point out on this report.
Coinbase has already begun experimenting with a protocol that enables AI brokers to make funds on-chain.
The tokenization, disintermediation, agentic AI narrative to beat the bear market blues
Crypto has been on the lookout for a “new” narrative to raise the fog of the bear market. Effectively, it’s been hiding in plain sight: tokenization, disintermediation, and Agentic AI.
Will that resolve the issue of an financial system with out sufficient employees getting paid wages and salaries to drive the consumption that corporations rely upon?
Most likely not, however because the report contends, we’ve obtained time to determine an answer for that. Taxing the hyperscaler ‘robber barons’ is recommended, however that’s unlikely to go down nicely with the Lords of the information facilities.
In funds, as elsewhere, disruption is coming and everybody – buyers, corporations, and shoppers – wants to begin fascinated with what all of it means.
Client habits is already shifting. Chargebacks911, a world chief in dispute decision and chargeback prevention, is warning retailers and funds corporations that agentic commerce will reshape disputes, as AI programs transfer from recommending purchases to executing them. Chargebacks are fee reversals initiated by a cardholder’s financial institution.
For years, most chargebacks fell into three classes: fraud, service provider error, or purchaser’s regret. Agent-initiated transactions create a fourth state of affairs. The acquisition is technically authorised, however the consequence doesn’t match the client’s expectations.
“The funds trade has at all times handled the press because the sign of intent,” says Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911.
“Agentic commerce removes the press. So now we’d like a brand new approach to show intent when a human was in a roundabout way concerned.”
Control your checking account, and welcome to the longer term.
Report co-author Alap Shah, explains extra in regards to the concepts within the report, akin to AI-induced ‘ghost GDP’, the place worth accrues on the steadiness sheets of the hyperscalers however doesn’t present up within the “human-centric client financial system”:
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