Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok cautioned that automated financial assistants might provoke a gradual bank run by systematically transferring consumer capital from low-yield deposit accounts into higher-paying financial products.
The widespread adoption of these digital tools could siphon away the inexpensive liquidity that banks rely on for issuing loans, potentially putting the wider financial system at risk.
Cryptocurrency settlement infrastructure is already actively facilitating this brand of agentic commerce.
In a Sunday publication titled “Is an Agentic bank run coming?”, Apollo’s Chief Economist Torsten Slok warned that automated helpers handling personal finances might ignite a slow-moving bank run.
Slok pointed out that Meta’s personal assistant Muse alongside comparable agent-driven technologies could soon automatically shift household savings into high-interest earning yields, bypassing standard checking accounts that typically give a 0.1% national average.
Torsten Slok ranks among the most influential and frequently read macroeconomic analysts on Wall Street. He also holds the position of partner at Apollo Global, a private-equity titan controlling approximately $1 trillion in assets.
Slok highlighted that institutions such as Revolut, SoFi, Varo, LendingClub, and Wealthfront currently offer annual yields between 3.3% and 5% on deposited funds. This generates roughly $100 annually on a $10,000 balance, contrasting sharply with the mere $10 yielded by ordinary checking accounts.
Consequently, he maintains that widespread deployment of automated financial agents for investment purposes could jeopardize traditional banks—which depend heavily on low-cost deposits to extend credit—thereby endangering the broader economic framework.
He noted that if every household utilized artificial intelligence agents to maximize returns on liquid cash, financial institutions could forfeit a massive portion of the cheap deposits necessary for lending, creating severe trouble for the entire financial apparatus.
Agentic finance describes autonomous AI systems that execute tasks instead of simply answering prompts. These tools continuously track balances in real time, evaluate yields across competing institutions, park idle money in lucrative accounts, and pull funds back right before bills are due.
Projections regarding this market size differ notably. Mordor Intelligence values the financial sector’s agentic AI footprint at $7.78 billion for 2026, forecasting an expansion to $43.52 billion by 2031. Meanwhile, MarketsandMarkets estimates the narrower artificial intelligence agent category at roughly $845 million for 2025.
The crypto industry is already establishing the payment pathways required by these autonomous agents. Coinbase’s x402 protocol, which stands as the most popular agentic transaction standard, enables an AI utility to purchase digital services using stablecoins within seconds, completely eliminating the need for traditional accounts, plastic cards, or human authorization.
To date, the x402 Protocol has reportedly processed anywhere from 188 million past the 205 million milestone in cumulative transactions, supported by approximately 69,000 active agents.
Prominent entities including Cloudflare, Google, Visa, Mastercard, Amazon Web Services, Circle, and Stripe have all joined the x402 Foundation, which currently operates under the governance of the Linux Foundation.
Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, previously asserted that both cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are converging to disrupt the conventional banking paradigm.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/28/ai-agents-could-drain-cheap-bank-deposits-apollo-s-torsten-slok-warns.
