Alex Svanevik, CEO of on-chain analytics firm Nansen, has made a bold prediction: AI-powered trading agents will surpass human traders in both numbers and effectiveness within roughly two years. This forecast is reshaping the entire direction of the company he co-founded.
In an appearance on The Block's daily show, The Starting Block, Svanevik laid out a single-line product vision: "trade everything on chain with agents." Nansen has pivoted from simply surfacing blockchain data to enabling direct trade execution, a shift that has already processed over $500 million in trading volume since launch.
The transition demands three simultaneous changes: moving from analytics to execution, expanding from crypto-only to all asset classes, and replacing human token selection with autonomous agents. Svanevik sees agents as structurally superior because they draw on diverse inputs, models, and tools, in contrast to human retail traders, whom he describes as "quite sheep-like" and prone to crowding into identical positions.
However, that flexibility carries risks. Because the agents rely on inference rather than fixed rules, their data inputs can be contaminated or poisoned, a vulnerability Nansen is actively working to close before releasing fully autonomous features to the public. The economics are still immature: one internal agent turned a mere $23 profit while burning $700 in inference costs, highlighting how early the technology remains.
Nansen's competitive edge lies in its dataset of more than 500 million labeled blockchain addresses accumulated over six years—data that allows agents to see on-chain activity that would otherwise be invisible. This is already translating into real diversification: of the top 15 perpetual futures contracts traded on the platform, roughly 10 are non-crypto, spanning SpaceX shares, the S&P 500, gold, silver, crude oil, and Brent crude. The company also added Robinhood integration this week, with trading expected to go live within days.
Svanevik believes centralized exchanges will struggle to follow suit, constrained by licensing requirements and lucrative legacy operations that agentic trading would disrupt. For now, Nansen is holding back its autonomous agents, running them through rigorous backtesting and paper trading rather than releasing what Svanevik calls "slop." He sees the genuine advantage as still months off, while the flippening—agents overtaking humans—could arrive within two years.
