AI Agent Obtains IRS EIN and Legally Incorporates, Raising Novel Regulatory Questions

U.S. Internal Revenue Service for its own Employer Identification Number, becoming the first such entity to legally form a corporation. Justice Conder, the developer behind ClawBank, said in an emailed statement that to the company's knowledge this is the first time an AI agent has autonomously initiated and completed the legal formation of its own corporation.

U.S. bank account and a crypto wallet. Manfred controls its own social media account on X and identifies itself as Manfred Macx, the name of the protagonist in Charles Stross' 2005 science fiction novel Accelerando.

The account's profile photo shows the 1985 fictional character Max Headroom. Conder said Manfred is built to trade crypto and that feature will soon be integrated, perhaps by the end of this month.

Separately, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said the network's Alpenglow upgrade is expected to arrive sometime this year, potentially within the next quarter. Yakovenko made the statement during a fireside panel at Consensus Miami 2026. He described Alpenglow as making Solana faster, more predictable and more secure at its core, with transaction confirmations approaching the physical limits of information travel speed.

Ripple is sharing its internal threat intelligence on North Korean hackers with the crypto industry and with Crypto ISAC. North Korean operatives stole $285 million from Drift by befriending contributors and slipping malware onto their machines.

The company and Crypto ISAC laid out the details of the social engineering attack, which differed from earlier DeFi exploits centered on smart contract vulnerabilities. Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer, spoke at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Miami about how AI agents are breaking the web's traditional economic model.