The JDB Report is exploring the implications of agentic AI for finance; see our recent report on Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity’s AI agent, Comet, which is raising the stakes for any kind of bot interaction on third-party platforms. Also check out our interview with Jessica Liu of Planto on open finance and our deep dive into digital ID and stablecoins.
Timo Hotti argues for the need for banks to build decentralized systems for agentic AI that are designed around micro-ledgers rather than shared ones. He has built a career working on designing trust in digital systems. He’s acquired patents on decentralized syncronicity, access control, and digital transactions. He’s created ITL, the intelligent trust layer, as a template for embedding verifiable trust, as the foundation for a new agentic economy. Today he is principal technology strategist at OP Financial Group, Finland’s largest financial institution, although he spoke with The JDB Report in a private capacity. You can follow him at timohotti.substack.com.
Timecodes
0:00 - Timo Hotti
1:49 - Working on how banks connect to the world and to each other; working on databases and early visions of decentralization
4:30 - Why innovation fails
6:38 - Bitcoin and new ways to transfer value; becoming a bank’s ‘blockchain expert’; the start of inter-bank projects and the limits of the technology
11:38 - Stablecoins, the challenges of compliance, and the true costs of building solutions
16:16 - Combining the worlds of digital transactions and digital identities - it can be done, using micro ledgers
20:41 - Introducing Timo’s concept of the Internet Trust Layer as a network of agents
24:50 - Why peer-to-peer databases are simplest and best for combatting AI fraud
27:16 - Privacy risks
28:53 - Implications for banks’ business models, surrendering certain revenues and counterparty relationships; imagining new models for long-run growth combining agentic and identity
31:35 - Interoperability hurdles to peer-to-peer, paths to success, the problems with public blockchains; the power of agentic AI combined with agentic trust
