The chief economist Torsten Slok warns that an assistant AI could trigger a bank run by automatically transferring family cash from low-interest checking accounts to higher-yielding alternative products.

In a report published on Sunday titled "Is an Agentic bank run coming?", Slok indicated that AI assistants might automatically transfer household cash from low-interest checking accounts to higher-yielding alternative accounts, potentially triggering a "slow-motion" bank run.

He pointed out that if such agent is widely used, the low-cost deposits on which banks rely to issue loans could be withdrawn, which in turn could threaten the broader financial system.

Encrypted payment infrastructure is already supporting agentic and finance.

Slok says that the personal agent of Meta, as well as similar assistants like agentic and AI, may soon automatically transfer family cash to high-interest accounts, rather than leaving it in checking accounts with an average national interest rate of 0.1%.

Torsten Slok is one of the most watched and influential investment economists on Wall Street. He is also a partner at the private equity giant Apollo Global, which manages assets worth approximately $1 trillion.

Slok mentioned that companies such as Revolut, SoFi, Varo, LendingClub, and Wealthfront pay annual interest rates ranging from 3.3% to 5% on deposits. Calculated based on a balance of $10,000, this is equivalent to approximately $100 in interest per year, whereas checking accounts only offer around $10 in interest.

Therefore, he believes that if families widely use agentic AI for investment, it could pose risks to banks that rely on low-cost deposits to create credit, and threaten the broader financial system as a whole.

agentic finance refers to those that are "action-oriented", AI, rather than just answering questions. Such agent can monitor balances in real-time, compare returns from different institutions, transfer idle cash to higher-yielding accounts, and then move funds back when it's time to pay bills.

There are significant differences in estimates for the size of this market. Mordor Intelligence predicts that the market size of agentic AI in the financial services sector will be 7.78 billion US dollars in 2026, and it is expected to grow to 43.52 billion US dollars by 2031. MarketsandMarkets estimates that the more narrowly defined AI agents market will be around 845 million US dollars in 2025.

The encryption industry has already established the payment channels required for such agent. The x402 protocol of Coinbase is the most widely used agentic payment standard. It allows AI and agent to pay for online services with stablecoins within a few seconds, without the need for an account, bank card, or manual approval.

As of now, x402 and Protocol have reportedly processed a total of approximately 188 million to over 205 million transactions, with around 69,000 active agent. Cloudflare, Google, Visa, Mastercard, AWS, Circle, and Stripe have joined x402 and Foundation, and the foundation is currently managed by Linux Foundation.

ETF Institute and co-founder Nate Geraci have previously stated that both AI and cryptocurrencies are challenging the traditional banking model.