jakiro
Jessy, bitchain vision
On September 16, Google and Coinbase jointly launched the Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2), which is in line with the X402 stablecoin payment track.This action gives AI Agent real ability to pay.In other words, AI is no longer just able to talk and execute, but can “spend money”.At this moment, the machine economy moves from imagination to reality.
The curtain of machine economy has officially opened
Back in August 2024, Coinbase was the first to complete a historic experiment: an AI robot used cryptocurrency to buy tokens from another AI robot.Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly announced on X at the time that this was a crypto transaction initiated and completed by AI without manual intervention.
The key facility behind this is Coinbase’s MPC wallet.It allows AI Agent to directly generate and hold wallet addresses and make payments on-chain using stablecoins such as USDC.Since AI cannot open an account in the banking system, MPC wallets become their key to entering the economic system.
Coinbase has since continuously pushing the boundaries of AI payments.They demonstrated the demo of AI to pay cryptocurrencies directly to humans, launched the CDP AI Builder program that supports AI Agent integrated wallets, and cooperated with startup Skyfire and others to explore the application scenarios of AI in independent procurement, labor settlement and cross-border payments.The logic is very clear: if AI wants to perform economic behavior in the real world, it must first learn to trade, and blockchain and stablecoins provide the ideal track.
Coinbase’s attempts proved feasibility, but Google’s addition means that this direction is being accepted by mainstream technology companies.
Relying on Google Cloud’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, AI on different platforms has been able to communicate and collaborate.The AP2 protocol and X402 payment track released this time have given AI Agent real payment function for the first time.Agent can not only propose plans, but also complete settlements independently, without manual intervention in the entire process.
In a demonstration with Lowe’s Innovation Lab, the AI Agent completed a complete shopping: diagnosing demand, recommending items, confirming orders, paying with USDC, triggering fulfillment.No bank card information was entered, and no one placed an order manually. As a natural person, humans just issued instructions and expressed confirmation, and the transaction on the chain was finally reached.
Google’s identity makes this progress iconic.This is not a blockchain startup that is conducting edge experiments, but the world’s largest cloud services and AI infrastructure giant, which directly promotes the payment standardization of AI Agent.
The natural fit between blockchain and AI Agent
The core characteristics of AI Agent are autonomous decision-making and automatic execution.But if transactions cannot be completed, their role in the economic system is always limited.The payment process is the key to transforming “agents” into “economics”.
Blockchain and stablecoins provide the basis for all this.First, they eliminate the threshold for opening an account.AI cannot open a bank account, but can generate a wallet address in seconds.Secondly, on-chain payments are settled in real time, and funds can be received in seconds without waiting for a complex liquidation process.Finally, blockchain payments are low enough to support micropayments of several cents or even smaller amounts.
This means that AI Agent can be truly implemented in a variety of scenarios.For example, research agents can automatically pay for accessing databases and generate reports instantly; code review agents can charge several cents based on the number of bugs found; customer service agents can call translation agents instantly and pay for their services; procurement agents in manufacturing can even automatically place orders and complete cross-border settlement.
This is not just a functional completion, but the beginning of the machine economy.Thousands of AI Agents will exist as economic people, and blockchain provides them with payment, identity and property rights protection, and transactions between them will form a new microeconomic.
As the tasks undertaken by AI Agent become more and more complex, seamless payment will become the core driving force, from cross-platform collaboration to automatic contract fulfillment.For developers, this means a brand new economic experimental field.They can create services run by Agent, explore “pay-as-you-go” business models, or build microeconomic systems that are completely powered by Agent.
For the blockchain industry, this provides the most direct implementation scenario for “crypto-native AI”.Blockchain provides AI with a transaction and property rights basis, while AI provides blockchain with real application needs. The combination of the two may become the growth point of the next round of technology cycle.
As Google and Coinbase highlighted in their release, payment is just the beginning.As AI Agent continues to enter the independent workflow, transactions will not only be affiliated links, but will become the core of the machine economy.
