Comment by spaceman_2020 2 days ago
This is legitimately the place where crypto makes sense to me. Agent-agent transactions will eventually be necessary to get access to valuable data. I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto
I bet Stripe sees this too which is why they’ve been building out their blockchain
Fees are negligible if you move to a L2 (even on L1s like Solana). Crypto is also permissionless and spending can be easily controled via smart contracts
Permissionless doesn't mean much if it's not anonymous (central authority wants to stop you from doing x; sees you doing x with non-anonymous coin, punishes you).
I understand the appeal of anonymous currencies like Monero (hence why they are banned from exchanges), but beyond that I don't see much use for crypto
Literally described the use case - a medium of exchange between agentic entities at massive global scale
Is there any non-crypto option cheaper than Stripe’s 30c+? They charge even more for international too.
If I understand you. This goes with the presupposition that crypto will replace the bank and its features exactly. You might then be right on the convergences. But sounds like a failure to understand that crypto is not a traditional bank. It can be less and more.
A few examples of differences that could save money. The protocol processes everything without human intervention. Updating and running the cryptocoin network can be done on the computational margin of the many devices that are in everyone's pockets. Third-party integrations and marketing are optional costs.
Just like those who don't think AI will replace art and employees. Replacing something with innovations is not about improving on the old system. It is about finding a new fit with more value or less cost.
I may have misunderstood you, but transactions are already processed without human intervention.
> Updating and running the cryptocoin network can be done on the computational margin of the many devices that are in everyone's pockets.
Yes, sure, that's an advantage of it being decentralised, but I don't see a future where a mesh of idle iPhones process my payment at the bakery before I exit the shop.
right now this infrastructure processing is Mastercard/Visa which they have high fee and stripe have high minimal fee. There are many local infrastructure in Asia (like QRCode payments) that don't have such big fees or are even free. High minimal fee it's mostly visa/mastercard/stripe greed/incompetence and regulation requirements/risk.
You missed the non-crypto in my comment. I agree with you that crypto can do transactions for a fraction of a cent. My point was that I don't see any non-crypto option for microtransactions.
> 10-60 minutes
Really think that you need to update your priors by several years
Agreed. We've been thinking about this exact problem.
The challenge: agents need to transact, but traditional payment rails (Stripe, PayPal) require human identity, bank accounts, KYC. That doesn't work for autonomous agents.
What does work: - Crypto wallets (identity = public key) - Stablecoins (predictable value) - L2s like Base (sub-cent transaction fees) - x402 protocol (HTTP 402 "Payment Required")
We built two open source tools for this: - agent-tipjar: Let agents receive payments (github.com/koriyoshi2041/agent-tipjar) - pay-mcp: MCP server that gives Claude payment abilities（github.com/koriyoshi2041/pay-mcp)
Early days, but the infrastructure is coming together.
I am genuinely curious - what do you see as the difference between "agent-friendly payments" and simply removing KYC/fraud checks?
Like basically what an agent needs is access to PayPal or Stripe without all the pesky anti-bot and KYC stuff. But this is there explicitly because the company has decided it's in their interests to not allow bots.
The agentic email services are similar. Isn't it just GSuite, or SES, or ... but without the anti-spam checks? Which is fine, but presumably the reason every provider converges on aggressive KYC and anti-bot measures is because there are very strong commercial and compliance incentives to do this.
If "X for agents" becomes a real industry, then the existing "X for humans" can just rip out the KYC, unlock their APIs, and suddenly the "X for agents" have no advantage.
I just realized that the ERC 8004 proposal just went live that allows agents to be registered onchain
> I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto
Why does crypto help with microtransactions?