Miami - Decentralized Finance is not dying but moving deeper into the financial mainstream alongside the rise of AI agents, according to crypto executives at Consensus Miami 2026.

“Crypto is absolutely hurtling into the mainstream,” said Hunter Horsley, co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management. “Stablecoins, tokenized assets and DeFi are part of that.”

The panel came weeks after a series of North Korean hacker exploits on protocols like Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO, which resulted in roughly $600 million in losses, drawing criticism over the sector’s security.

DeFi is “an inevitable future,” said Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, dismissing claims that DeFi is fading. The technology underpinning lending protocols and smart contracts is already proving itself at scale, he argued.

“There’s $100 billion on lending markets or more,” Assia said. “The technology stack is mind-blowing, and it’s being battle-tested all the time.”

Much of the discussion focused on how AI agents are accelerating interest in crypto-native financial infrastructure. Guy Wuollet, general partner at a16z Crypto, argued that autonomous AI systems will ultimately require financial rails that look “either literally DeFi or a lot like DeFi.”

“If we believe AI agents are going to be economically important actors, we need a financial system built for them,” Wuollet said.

The executives also agreed that institutional attitudes toward crypto and DeFi are changing quickly. Horsley said Bitwise, which manages roughly $15 billion in assets, is now receiving requests from regulated fintech firms and neobanks looking for compliant ways to offer DeFi-related products.

“The institutions and corporates are arriving,” Horsley said. “They finally feel able to interact with the space.”

Wuollet said many large financial firms are initially approaching blockchain infrastructure less for crypto speculation and more for operational efficiency.

“Finance is going through a digital transformation,” he said. “Institutions want to replace their backend and core ledger with a blockchain.”