Adam Cai of Virgo on AI agents managing crypto wallets

0:00We're live at Consensus 2026 Miami with Adam Cai, CEO of Virgo Group. You guys have we've been talking since 2017, 2018 originally starting in Canada when I was there and you guys have been expanding all over managing through the crypto cycles still growing now getting into more as institutions get involved. You guys are deep in it as well. Maybe you

0:26could start with a little bit on the Virgo Group and the different parts that you see the industry is growing in the most and how you guys are are tapping into those sections and then we can dive into the latest expansions. You know, first of all thank you Ashley for having me and also we are building a long-term relationships and you actually witness how we kind of

0:46changed from Canadian dominant player now kind of becoming a little a little bit more of a global side of setting. And I think this decision wasn't easy. It took us 5 years Yeah. to make such a decision. So now I think you know with how the crypto is moving, there are two things that's going to be very important for the future of the massive adoption for

1:07crypto. One is certainly AI. Yeah. AI [clears throat] is going to play a huge role in kind of increasing the use cases for blockchain, for payments, for trading. It's also going to lower the entry barrier by a large margin. So the second big topic is certainly about stablecoin payments. Yeah.

Like removing frictions and making cheaper and all that stuff. So we

1:30decided to come up with two global initiatives which kind of hold hands each other to achieve the vision. So the first one is Walabi. So which is a self-custody AI agent wallet that can work in super settings. So what we want to try to achieve is we want to build a really nice web 3 structure within wallet. So a lot of it top notch handpicked DeFi protocols with a

1:53natively built into the wallet. But that's just kind of the beginning part of it. It's giving people good ideas of what expressions you can use. But we also have AI agents across different functions, right? We have an AI chatbot to show you how to use it. Yeah. We have AI agents just live starting from 4 weeks ago where you have seven large language

2:13models to choose from where users can actually put in a prompt. And we actually pay currently where we pay for all the tokens users use on a daily basis. And then you can actually rent that, you know, through for liquid assets. Obviously, region certain regions are limited by IP, but you are able to use it in that AI agent to kind of a training for

2:34you for 7/24. This is really interesting because I think a lot of people want to see their LLM or their chatbot have like a wallet. But there's a lot of functionality to that and I think the crypto industry knows best about wallets and then building in the AI functionality from there. Because I've used Wallet B. It's a It's a nice wallet and I know you guys were also, you know,

2:56having the prediction market integrations, which I think is huge, too. But I know a lot of new users to crypto and how we're getting more adoption with people that haven't really gotten into the depths of DeFi and they always have so many questions and they're like, where do I go to find, you know, to what YouTube channel do I watch to like learn?

3:16If you have AI built into the wallet, that seems like the obvious solution. That's correct because actually think about this way. For a lot of a wallet or DeFi protocol now, what they have is a providing the skills documentation for the people to connect with their own AI agents, which ultimately is going to be very nice, but with the current stage of AI adoptions,

3:37for a normal you day-to-day users to write like, you know, their to train their own AI agents to connect with skills, it's not an easy job. It's pretty difficult. Definitely. So we actually build that within that and also the nice part of this is you can actually see every 15 minutes how AI is making decisions. So you have those original extract. So you will see okay,

3:58why they open position, why they close it, why they do this, why they do that. So that kind of things give you a lot more a lot more confidence. And also it give people the come to point where they can continuously improve their prompt over time, right? So the goal is not trying to find like one prompt is going to make money all the time. There's no such

4:19secret. I think that's important for wallets and for people that are using agents to trade. It's like, you know, you can copy trade some guy, but you never really learn. You're just copying the answers to the test.

what they're doing cuz they're actually drunk. They make a trade right there. Or like they sold it happy, they're emotional. You don't have that. But with

4:39AI trading, at least you would know what's their rational to make logic. If you don't like it, you can change your prompt. So that gives the transparency, at least more confident. Yeah. With trading and investing, one of the biggest mistakes people do is emotional trading. What about the fact that AI agents would have agree with whatever you say? You

5:00know, some of these ChatGPT, they'll sympathize with however you're feeling. How can you extrapolate that out in trading to make sure that it's not emotional?

good question. That's actually a very good question. So I think you know, that's what we would call There's a word for this. It's called a hallucination hallucination. Hallucinations.

Hallucinations. Yeah, that's the word.

5:20Thank you. So what it is basically AI will sometimes be imagine something that's entirely off. And they could even make the calculation wrong. Or they can misinterpret what you put in the prompt. Yeah. So the way to solve this issue, unfortunately, is you have to limit AI. So the way we do it is for example, if you do technical analysis, we would get you like 10, 15 dimensions

5:47where the AI can only make their decision within those parameters. They cannot just think all over the place. And we also have to tell tell them you have to manage certain things from this to this to this. Okay.

So, we're actually basically the way is constraining AI to not let it to be jump out of box too much. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's going to be the way to control

6:09the risks Mhm. of hallucination and also not let AI to make some crazy decisions. And then that's also a matter of people's, you know, kind of continuous improvement. What kind of you're putting there? Yeah. That's [laughter] something very interesting. So, with the with the growth of the wallet, I saw that you guys were recently expanding outside of Canada. [laughter]

6:36There is the US is a huge financial market, of course. Southeast Asia's always been big. Where do are you seeing the most growth with the functions that you've built in the wallet and new users still coming into crypto, where are you guys focused now in the world? Yeah, we actually see a lot of growth from Southeast Asia. And people are kind of finding this tool to be a

6:58potential good alternative to their own trading. Mhm. Because, you know, they just made a lot of mistakes. They got to kind of get liquidated all the time. [laughter] Do you want to look for that kind of alternative tool to help them to control risks? Not actually always making the money, but control risks to be more actionable like execution plan, right?

7:16Asia is a good market. We also see some people from Australia. Very interesting. Interesting. And certainly we're going to look at more markets over time, but our goal is trying to figure out a way to bring a real benefit for AI Yeah. to the users. Not just saying, "Oh, we're AI and we I don't care about the final results." Yeah. As you can tell, and

7:39we actually we actually do that [laughter] on a on a basis, analyzing each AR modular, which one performs best. Yeah. And the winning ratio. And with all that kind of data, it's pretty fun to see that. Definitely. I think a People understand that a lot of people are using AI at its most basic level. You know, they're just asking questions and getting an answer. It's like

8:02talking to a friend, but these models are capable of advanced financial analysis. And maybe you don't need to overcomplicate your portfolio, but there must be a way to hone that AI in with Wallet B to make better decisions than and utilize more of what AI is capable of. Totally. And I think that's only even just a one-off use case for AI for trading. There could be also other use

8:29cases for AI finding you the best routing for swap. Yeah. Workflow optimization. And there could also be in the future about it, like, you know, using AI to figure out how to do yield farming, Yeah. Like, if you don't have money, and you have assets and you have, you know, idle assets, what should you do with it? It actually gives you solid advice to maximize kind of your yield

8:50over time. So, I think AI can do a lot of things that human beings, like I would say that normal person. Like, maybe for the people like you, you are so professional, like I actually you can make a lot of good decisions. But for most of the day-to-day users, they don't know enough, or they don't have time to make proper research. Even though doing your own research is

9:09very important, people just don't do research. So, that's [clears throat] where AI can kick in, tell the risks, help you to make decisions better, informed decisions. Definitely. AI is growing at like an exponential speed. We've seen the latest versions of Claude with security, and it's only going to get more entrenched into the financial markets.

9:32How quickly do you think Wallet B and Virgo, as well as just the industry in general, that this convergence is going to happen of AI with, you know, financial portfolio management. Yeah, I think that's a I would hope we can make some first-mover advantage. Yeah.

Okay, we can have some some some some advantage.

9:59But this is actually very complex, though. Yeah.

It's very it's very complex. The Web3 structure is relatively easy to connect with other things. But to leverage AI, also kind of kind of a figure out a balance of the securities. Yeah. Like how how do we ensure that private key is not going to be leaked? Yeah. Not going to be messed around with AI

10:17agents. And also the benefit of the convenience and also increasing the kind of the final end of making more money or having better yield. So that balance is really hard to achieve. Mhm. But I think with the better better module coming up kind of more and more people spending money and tie into this. My goal is before the end of this year Mhm. Wallet D

10:43will be like a go-to wallet for people want to enjoy the benefits of AI helping you to make your financial decisions. So that's going to cover quite a few different sectors within the Web3 DeFi areas. Yeah. Including trading, you know, swapping, yield farming. So with that, I'm hoping I can lower entry barriers. And then giving the normal users a

11:07better chance to survive Yeah.

in this kind of a risky, dangerous crypto world.

And that's how we can retain new customers. And then when in the future when people say, "Okay, I have a AI agent, which wallet I should go?" Well, they should ask ChatGPT.

Mhm. Yeah. Hopefully they will go to Wallet D. Yeah, that's that's becoming the go-to search for information is

11:30what do they call it? GEO instead of SEO. We're actually spending some resources into this. Yeah, gene- generative engine optimization because no longer are we going to be searching. We're going to be generating. That's correct. And Google, unfortunately, I think it's going to be replaced by that. Definitely.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's super exciting.

11:48And from what I understand, you guys are mobile first in the app stores. So, we just figured that we just figured that we would probably just want to have a really nice app. And very easy to use. And I think that's kind of the way a normal user can get access to it rather than they have to have a web terminal, a crypto wallet, and they cannot see that

12:11on the phone. Yeah, so difficult. Like I feel like that piece where where it's going to be a lot. Yeah. Super exciting. I love that you guys are diving deep into AI. There's so much potential that's untapped, especially in crypto wallets. I don't know any other crypto wallet that is doing what you guys are doing.

We're actually the first one. Yeah,

12:30that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for the time, Adam.

Ashley. Great to see you again, as always. Best of luck to everything with Virgo. And let's follow up in the near future. We will do. Thank you.