Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig says it is “no longer science fiction” to imagine a refrigerator autonomously purchasing groceries with money earned from staking Ether — or even launching its own memecoin — a colorful scenario that raises the question of how regulators should oversee autonomous AI agents in financial markets.

Selig made the remarks at the CFTC’s inaugural Frontier Forum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, where he argued that regulators must adapt to a financial system in which AI agents can hold assets and execute trades on their own.

“We’re gathered here today to discuss a technology that’s rapidly transforming the financial markets. President Trump calls it ‘super intelligence,’ or SI, because ‘it’s not artificial.’ It’s as real as the printing press, the steam engine, and the internet,” he said.

The regulatory questions arrive as younger investors increasingly embrace AI tools for managing money. An eToro survey published in September found that 79% of US millennial investors and 77% of Gen Z investors already use — or are open to using — AI to select or adjust their investments, highlighting the potential reach of rules governing automated finance.

Selig noted that the CFTC’s regulatory framework was developed around “identifiable market participants” performing specific financial functions, but autonomous software is now raising questions about how those rules apply. Taken together, those questions put responsibility, identity and trading permissions at the center of any system in which a human delegates financial activity to software.

“Consider an SI agent that identifies trading opportunities and executes transactions on behalf of a user,” he said. “Does the developer of that agent become subject to registration? Who is liable if the agent goes rogue? How can regulators know who the agent, or suite of agents, is trading on behalf of? Do we need a new flavor of know-your-customer, maybe KYA or know-your-agent?”

AI could democratize trading, but bring new risks

According to Selig, AI could give smaller traders and businesses access to risk-management tools once reserved for larger institutions. “SI can help process the vast amount of information significantly faster than human brain power and with greater accuracy,” he said.

Greater autonomy, however, brings new risks. Agents could react unexpectedly to market conditions, while those running similar models could produce correlated trading behavior. The speed of autonomous transactions could also complicate market surveillance and risk management, he said.

Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu recently raised a similar concern, telling Cointelegraph that a thousand people asking AI about the same trade could receive roughly the same answer. Users’ own knowledge and follow-up questions help shape more personalized strategies, he said. Siu has also cautioned that although AI agents can trade around the clock, users could lose access at any time, as he discussed in a Cointelegraph Magazine feature.

Last year, the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee also warned that widespread use of similar models could amplify market shocks.

Crypto exchanges are already developing tools for autonomous trading. Cointelegraph reported that Coinbase’s CEO touts agentic finance as Base tops 100M AI payments, and the exchange introduced Agentic Wallets in February, allowing agents to spend and trade within user-defined limits. Binance launched AI Agent Skills in March to provide market data and tools for placing and managing spot orders.