Author: Zhou Hang
Over the past decade, if you mentioned " cryptocurrency " to an average person , the words that would most likely come to mind are: getting rich quick, being fleeced, hacking, or some incomprehensible geek toy.
From the emergence of Bitcoin ( BTC ) to the smart contract revolution of Ethereum ( ETH ) , and then to the clamor of various public chains and stablecoins, the world has been noisy for over a decade. Countless brilliant minds and massive amounts of capital have poured into it, attempting to build a decentralized utopia.
But we are still confused in real life: apart from being a highly volatile speculative asset, and apart from buying low and selling high on exchanges, what is the use of cryptocurrency? When we go downstairs to buy a cup of coffee, we still use WeChat and Alipay; for cross-border transfers, we still have to go through cumbersome bank wire transfers.
It claims to be disrupting finance, yet it seems unable to even do the most basic " payment " function well.
Today, with the advent of the A2A ( Agent to Agent ) smart economy, this confusion has finally been resolved: cryptocurrency has not failed; it has simply been targeting the wrong users over the past decade.
Why cryptocurrencies can't become " people's money "
When Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper in 2008 , the title was prominently displayed: " A peer-to-peer electronic cash system . " His initial intention was to create an everyday payment tool.
In 2010 , a programmer named Laszlo bought two pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins. This was considered a great beginning for cryptocurrency payments. But the story then took another extreme.
There are three insurmountable real-world obstacles preventing cryptocurrencies from becoming everyday currencies:
First, there's volatility. When something is worth $ 1 today but might drop to $ 0.50 or rise to $ 2 tomorrow , nobody dares to price it. There's a common-sense principle in economics called " good money is hoarded . " When you expect Bitcoin to rise, you definitely won't use it to buy pizza.
Secondly, there's the counterintuitive experience. Humans are creatures who utterly abhor trouble. Encrypted payments require you to carefully safeguard a long string of seemingly random private keys; once lost, your assets are instantly wiped out, and there's no customer service to help you recover them. You also need to understand what gas fees are and endure long waits during network congestion.
Finally, there's regulation and taxation. In many countries, buying a cup of coffee with cryptocurrency is considered a " sale of asset " by the tax authorities , requiring you to calculate and declare capital gains tax.
Humans need stable, simple financial services with customer support and legal protection. While there are frictions between traditional banking and the fiat currency system, they perfectly meet humanity's need for security.
Cryptocurrencies attempted to pull humanity into a cold, absolutely rational world of code where risk is borne by the user, but this was naturally rejected by humanity, ultimately degenerating into a kind of " digital gold " and speculative chips.
The Money of Machines: When Agents Become Consumers
But what if we switch our perspective from " human " to " machine " ?
In the A2A smart economy, hundreds of millions of AI agents will be calling each other's APIs , purchasing computing power, acquiring data, and even negotiating rental agreements on your behalf every day. Coinbase 's CEO once astutely pointed out: "AI can't open a bank account with an ID card, but it can control a crypto wallet without any problems. "
For AI agents , the advantages of the traditional financial system are all disadvantages, while the disadvantages of cryptocurrencies are all advantages.
Machines don't need customer service; they only trust code. Traditional contracts require lawyers to draft, courts to enforce, and banks to settle, taking days or even months. In the world of agents , however, they use " smart contracts " —essentially programs stored on the blockchain. When conditions are met, funds are automatically transferred instantly, and no one can default. This is the true meaning of " machine-native contracts . "
Machines need micropayments that can be completed in milliseconds. Imagine an AI agent generating a report for you, and it needs to purchase a piece of real-time data from another agent for $ 0.001 . Traditional credit card networks charge a fee of $ 0.30 per transaction, making such microtransactions impossible. However, through encrypted networks, agents can complete the settlement at extremely low cost within hundreds of milliseconds.
Machines have no borders and no identities. They don't require complex KYC (Know Your Customer) verification. With just a private key, an agent running on a Singapore server can instantly pay an agent running in Tokyo.
A status code that has been dormant for 30 years
The most telling example of this paradigm shift is a metaphorical real history within the internet world.
If you frequently browse the internet, you've likely encountered the "404 Not Found " error . In the original design of the HTTP protocol, there was actually another status code called 402 Payment Required.
The pioneers of the internet foresaw that the future network would not only need to transmit information, but also value. However, due to the lack of a native internet payment layer at the time, the 402 status code was shelved for 30 years and was almost never actually used.
Until 2025 , a payment protocol designed specifically for AI agents was created, and it was called x402 .
Using the x402 protocol, when an agent requests data from another server, if payment is required, the server no longer displays a credit card form that requires human completion. Instead, it directly returns a machine-readable "402 Payment Required" instruction. Upon receiving the instruction, the agent instantly uses USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar) from its encrypted wallet to complete the payment. The entire process is completed within a few hundred milliseconds, and the data channel is then opened.
No registration, no QR code scanning, no password verification. Value flows seamlessly through the underlying layers of the internet, just like data.
Human Money vs. Machine Money: The Folding of Wealth
According to data from blockchain analytics firms, in just a few months from 2025 to early 2026 , AI agents have already completed hundreds of millions of payments using stablecoins. Cryptocurrencies no longer need to prove themselves superior to Alipay; they have already sunk into the depths of the internet, becoming the silent lifeblood of countless machines.
But the story doesn't end there. When machines begin to have wallets, to earn and spend money autonomously, how should we, as humans deeply entrenched in the concepts of " cash " and " bank accounts , " understand this entirely new form of wealth? What is the relationship between our money and the money of machines?
In the past, wealth was tangible and physical. When you took out a banknote or opened a bank app to watch the balance change, you had a visceral understanding of " spending money . "
But in the future, wealth will be folded.
Imagine you hire an AI agent to help you manage a social media account. You don't need to pay it a salary; you just need to deposit 100 USDC (equivalent to $ 100 ) into its "Agentic Wallet " in the initial stage.
Next, this agent began its autonomous rampage: it paid another data agent 0.05 USDC to obtain trending topics; paid a drawing agent 0.1 USDC to generate accompanying images; and after the article was published, it automatically pocketed the advertising revenue share it earned (possibly 0.5 USDC ).
In this process, the machine's money flows, accrues interest, and is consumed at millisecond speeds within the underlying network. And you, as the human owner, have absolutely no idea about these densely packed micro-payment records. You don't need to understand what x402 is , nor do you need to know what smart contracts are.
The only thing you'll see is a very brief weekly report from the agent : " Invested $ 10 this week , netted $ 50 , profit has been withdrawn to your fiat bank account. "
This is the ultimate division of labor between humans and machines in terms of wealth: machines handle the friction, and humans enjoy the results.
The money of machines (cryptocurrency) is for circulation; it is a high-frequency, ruthless means of production that pursues ultimate efficiency. The money of people (fiat currency) is for experience; it is the ultimate destination for buying coffee, paying rent, and providing a sense of security in life.
Cryptocurrencies haven't eliminated bank accounts; they've simply pushed complex financial transactions down a layer. While humans enjoy the ultimate convenience brought by AI at the forefront , in those unseen layers, a financial system exclusively for machines is silently reshaping the world's business rules.
