Michael Selig, chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said blockchain could play a key role in verifying AI-generated media and distinguishing authentic content from synthetic material as misinformation concerns grow.
Speaking on The Pomp Podcast with host Anthony Pompliano, Selig suggested market-led solutions using blockchain: “The private markets have solutions — blockchain technology is a great one. If you can timestamp things and make sure there’s an identifier for each meme or AI generated posts, you can verify if it’s real or generated by AI… Having these technologies here in the US is critical.” He added the provocative assertion, “you can’t have AI without blockchain,” stressing U.S. leadership in crypto infrastructure.
On the topic of AI agents in trading, Selig warned against heavy-handed rules that could stifle innovation. “I’m concerned that we over-regulate and strangle some of the technology here in the US… I’m taking a very much minimum effective dose of regulation approach, where we’re… making sure that we’re regulating the actors… and not the software developers. The software developers are the ones building the tools, but they’re not actually engaging in the financial transactions.” He said the CFTC is actively evaluating how AI models are used in markets and believes enforcement should focus on market participants conducting financial activity rather than on technology creators.
A central challenge as AI use expands is reliably telling real content from synthetic media. Selig’s comments reflect wider interest from policymakers and developers in using blockchain for provenance and content verification. One proposed approach is proof-of-personhood systems, which aim to confirm that accounts map to unique humans rather than bots. A prominent example is Sam Altman’s World and its World ID protocol, which allows users to prove humanity without exposing personal data by using encrypted biometric iris scans stored locally — a design that has attracted debate over privacy and potential coercion.
In March, World introduced AgentKit, a toolkit designed to let AI agents demonstrate they are linked to a verified human when interacting with services. AgentKit combines proof-of-personhood credentials with the x402 micropayments protocol developed by Coinbase and Cloudflare, enabling agents to pay for access while presenting cryptographic proof of human backing.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has also argued for cryptographic tools — including zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain timestamps — to make online systems more verifiable and to validate how content is created and distributed without revealing sensitive information.
These technical proposals arrive amid broader U.S. policy work on AI. On March 20, the federal government released a national framework calling for a unified federal approach and warning that a patchwork of state laws could hinder innovation and competitiveness.
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