Charles Hoskinson, Cardano founder and Input Output CEO, said the cryptocurrency industry could eventually provide artificial intelligence with payment rails, data ownership, provenance and distributed computing. Speaking on the September 16 episode of the Deeptech Insights podcast, he argued that data-center spending cannot keep growing tenfold annually because electricity is limited, while companies including OpenAI and Anthropic must become profitable at scale and pre-training creates substantial financial pressure. Hoskinson compared AI’s current relationship with crypto to cryptographers’ earlier reluctance to work with cryptocurrency, saying he expects AI to follow a similar path within five to 10 years. He said blockchains could help coordinate payments, alignment and data provenance through shared rules, track intellectual property and automate royalties, and connect phones and GPUs as an alternative to new data centers. He also predicted that the CLARITY Act will not pass Congress until 2029, after the Senate failed to advance it on September 15 because it lacked the 60 votes required.