Coinbase Institute paper: AI agents are the internet's second customer, and stablecoins fit micro-payments
kleffew94 · x · 2026-10-07
A new Coinbase Institute paper, "Machine-to-machine payments in the AiFi era," argues the internet now has a second customer: AI agents that retrieve, compare, and transact on a person's behalf — without watching ads or sending human readers back to publishers, undermining the attention/ads/subscription business model.
Key points:
- Creators, publishers, and developers need a way to get paid when agents use their work, sometimes for a fraction of a cent.
- Existing payment rails struggle with high-velocity microtransactions.
- Stablecoins on low-cost networks are a strong fit for machine-to-machine payments today.
- Policy goal: an open, interoperable payment layer with safeguards.
Co-authored by kleffew94, MurrLincoln, smshr98 and others.
Related event: Coinbase Paper: Stablecoins Best Suited for AI Agent Micropayments(2 posts)→
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