Discus Fish of Cobo and Samuel Tse of Animoca Brands discuss how AI agents, digital identity and blockchain could change the way money moves.
Updated
November 2, 2026 12:03 PM
The Agentic Economy Summit at CVCF 2026 explores how AI agents and digital assets could shape the future of business and finance. IMAGE: CYBERPORT
For an AI agent to manage money on someone’s behalf, it needs more than the ability to follow instructions. It must be able to establish whom it represents, access funds and transact within agreed limits.
These are among the questions informing the discussion of AI and digital assets at Cyberport Venture Capital Forum (CVCF) 2026. Ahead of the forum, Discus Fish, CEO and Co-founder of Cobo, and Samuel Tse, Head of Investment and Corporate Finance at Animoca Brands, shared their views on how this convergence could develop—and where they see opportunities for businesses.
Discus Fish points to a longstanding challenge: blockchain can be difficult for everyday users to navigate, but AI agents may find it easier to interact with these networks.
“Blockchains have always been hard for ordinary people to use. AI agents may be better users: the chain is fully transparent and every record is traceable, which suits agents well.”
His outlook comes with a qualification. Both the agents and the networks they would use still need to develop.
“Agents aren’t capable enough yet, and chains are still adapting. But once agents truly run on-chain, the number of users and what’s possible will grow by an order of magnitude.”
Discus Fish says blockchain could reshape how financial assets are issued, traded and settled over the next five years. He also notes that institutional adoption has progressed faster than Cobo initially expected, with individual users no longer leading the shift. “Since 2017, we have believed blockchain will become part of the financial infrastructure of the future. We expected individual users to lead, but institutions moved faster.”
For Fish, the next stage involves a broader range of assets and financial clients.
“What gets redefined next is how assets are issued, traded, and settled. As traditional assets like US equities come on-chain, a much wider range of financial clients will follow.”
Samuel Tse, Head of Investment and Corporate Finance at Animoca Brands, focuses on investment opportunities across digital assets and agentic AI. He sees digital identity as essential to allowing AI agents to act on behalf of people while keeping transactions within the permissions they set.
He believes users should set clear rules for what an AI agent can do, allowing it to complete transactions without requiring approval for each one.
“Once agents can prove who they represent, hold digital assets, and move value under clear rules, the economy stops being click-by-click. You set the policy once—who, how much, for what—and the agent transacts inside it.”
He describes applications ranging from everyday payments and transfers to subscriptions, swaps and earning returns on idle funds. “That’s agentic transactions: payments, transfers, subscriptions, swaps, even chasing a better rate on idle cash. Identity is the trust layer. Assets and credentials are the spending authority—always accountable to the human who granted permission.”
In Tse’s account, the human remains the source of that authority. The agent acts within the permissions granted to it.
To illustrate how AI agents, digital identity and digital assets might work together, Tse offers a hypothetical Hong Kong parent's weekday.
“A Hong Kong parent’s weekday: top up the child’s Octopus, book a weekend football slot, translate a school notice for the helper, check weather before pickup, restock milk at the member price, and keep leftover budget earning until tomorrow.”
At present, he says, completing these tasks requires navigating services that often operate separately.
“Today that means many apps that don't talk to each other, and rails that struggle with micro payments.”
His proposed alternative brings the tasks together under instructions established by the user.
“With an agent, they set the rules once and let it decide what to do. Identity unlocks trust and member prices without oversharing. Digital assets fit the money—per-use fees, hard limits, yield until spend.”
For Tse, this combination could create opportunities across payments, merchants, identity providers and digital-asset platforms. He compares the potential scale of agentic commerce to an earlier change in how consumers accessed services.
“The iPhone in 2007 rewired how people buy and use services for 20 years. We are just at the beginning of a similar paradigm shift, with outcomes we can barely imagine.”
Discus Fish and Samuel Tse offer two perspectives on the emerging agentic economy, from the blockchain infrastructure enabling transactions to the digital identity and permissions that allow AI agents to act on people's behalf. At CVCF 2026, these ideas will become part of a wider conversation with the leaders building and investing in this evolving space.
Be part of the conversation. Join industry leaders, founders and investors at CVCF 2026 on 4–5 November and explore the technologies and opportunities shaping the next phase of business.
Exclusive for Ventureport readers: Use code cvcf26vp to access a Full Access Pass for HK$300, subject to confirmation by the organiser.
Keep Reading
From information gaps to global access — how AI is reshaping the pursuit of knowledge.
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:33 PM
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Paper cut-outs of robots sitting on a pile of books. PHOTO: FREEPIK
Encyclopaedias have always been mirrors of their time — from heavy leather-bound volumes in the 19th century to Wikipedia’s community-edited pages online. But as the world’s information multiplies faster than humans can catalogue it, even open platforms struggle to keep pace. Enter Botipedia, a new project from INSEAD, The Business School for the World, that reimagines how knowledge can be created, verified and shared using artificial intelligence.
At its core, Botipedia is powered by proprietary AI that automates the process of writing encyclopaedia entries. Instead of relying on volunteers or editors, it uses a system called Dynamic Multi-method Generation (DMG) — a method that combines hundreds of algorithms and curated datasets to produce high-quality, verifiable content. This AI doesn’t just summarise what already exists; it synthesises information from archives, satellite feeds and data libraries to generate original text grounded in facts.
What makes this innovation significant is the gap it fills in global access to knowledge. While Wikipedia hosts roughly 64 million English-language entries, languages like Swahili have fewer than 40,000 articles — leaving most of the world’s population outside the circle of easily available online information. Botipedia aims to close that gap by generating over 400 billion entries across 100 languages, ensuring that no subject, event or region is overlooked.
"We are creating Botipedia to provide everyone with equal access to information, with no language left behind", says Phil Parker, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science, creator of Botipedia and holder of one of the pioneering patents in the field of generative AI. "We focus on content grounded in data and sources with full provenance, allowing the user to see as many perspectives as possible, as opposed to one potentially biased source".
Unlike many generative AI tools that depend on large language models (LLMs), Botipedia adapts its methods based on the type of content. For instance, weather data is generated using geo-spatial techniques to cover every possible coordinate on Earth. This targeted, multi-method approach helps boost both the accuracy and reliability of what it produces — key challenges in today’s AI-driven content landscape.
Additionally, the innovation is also energy-efficient. Its DMG system operates at a fraction of the processing power required by GPU-heavy models like ChatGPT, making it a sustainable alternative for large-scale content generation.
By combining AI precision, linguistic inclusivity and academic credibility, Botipedia positions itself as more than a digital library — it’s a step toward universal, unbiased access to verified knowledge.
"Botipedia is one of many initiatives of the Human and Machine Intelligence Institute (HUMII) that we are establishing at INSEAD", says Lily Fang, Dean of Research and Innovation at INSEAD. "It is a practical application that builds on INSEAD-linked IP to help people make better decisions with knowledge powered by technology. We want technologies that enhance the quality and meaning of our work and life, to retain human agency and value in the age of intelligence".
By harnessing AI to bridge gaps of language, geography and credibility, Botipedia points to a future where access to knowledge is no longer a privilege, but a shared global resource.