AI has been a ‘net negative’ for crypto: Phemex CEO

Phemex CEO Federico Variola says AI has been a ‘net negative’ for crypto, despite the crypto exchange announcing an AI-focused transformation earlier this year. 

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, Variola said AI has diverted capital away from the industry, while empowering attackers and driving up cybersecurity costs for smaller teams — pressures that risk pushing crypto toward greater centralization. 

“It’s difficult to be bullish about AI in crypto,” he said. “Liquidity have been significantly diverted to to that industry on one side. On the other hand, AI has empowered a lot of bad actors that have been exploiting protocols.”

“It’s difficult to envision a world in which AI is going to favor crypto specifically as an industry, since a lot of the fixes that we see actually encourage more centralization rather than less centralization.”

Variola’s assessment offers a skeptical view of AI’s impact on crypto. It also comes after his crypto exchange announced an AI transformation in February, when he outlined plans to embed the technology across product development and internal operations, though his latest views focused on the broader crypto industry. 

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