Author: Peter Schroeder
Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews
Before the birth of the internet, personal computers had already demonstrated their revolutionary power. In the 1990s, the widespread adoption of personal computers fundamentally changed the way people handled daily tasks, significantly improving work efficiency and quality of life. However, despite the powerful capabilities of these computers, they were still isolated independent systems, with their abilities limited to closed environments.
The emergence of the internet completely changed this landscape. Computers suddenly gained the ability to connect to the vast world of information and the global user network. These once-independent machines transformed into portals to infinite possibilities, enabling instant communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This groundbreaking innovation ultimately shaped the technology-driven modern society we live in today.
Currently, money is undergoing a similar historical transformation. Traditionally, money has primarily served the three basic functions of medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. With the advent of , money has begun to acquire all the advantages of the internet and has created the conditions for the rise of agents.
The market capitalization of has now reached $200 billion, processing trillions of dollars in transactions monthly. By combining the stability of fiat currency and the programmability of digital assets, have become the infrastructure for internet-native money, opening up new possibilities for the global decentralized finance system.
agents inject intelligence into this new monetary system. agents can:
Analyze massive amounts of data
Predict market trends
Achieve unprecedented levels of automation
When this intelligence is combined with the seamless value transfer provided by , a whole new realm of possibilities is unlocked. For example, investors can use to analyze real-time global financial data while leveraging for instant, secure transaction execution.
The combination of and has created an efficient and intelligent new financial ecosystem. not only can autonomously analyze data and execute tasks, but it can also directly interact with blockchain protocols, which is not just financial process automation, but a fundamental transformation of the traditional financial system.
The Three Stages of Stablecoin Evolution
provide the scalability and reliability that agents need to operate autonomously.
Since their inception in 2014, have processed over $60 trillion in transaction volume, currently accounting for about half of the total on-chain transaction volume.
While have found a clear product-market fit and are ready for the development of agents, their application scenarios will unfold in stages. As Robbie Petersen described in his article "The Role of Cryptocurrencies in the Agent Economy," this process will go through three distinct stages:
Stage 1: Human-AI Interaction (Present)
This stage is the closest to the current state. For example, Perplexity's recently launched shopping feature allows agents to make purchases on behalf of users. Although the stablecoin functionality is not yet integrated, the full rollout of such features is imminent.
As Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital, said: "AI is ruthless because it has no emotions. It won't be swayed by a nice steak dinner, taken to a basketball game, or convinced by a CEO. It's just an agent that looks at API endpoints and writes code to get a job done." This indicates that agents will choose the most accessible and efficient systems, unaffected by factors such as marketing or business development. is building tools to enable agents to leverage and other .
Stage 2: AI-Human Interaction (Emerging)
This stage is rapidly evolving. According to Robbie, a researcher at , this stage is characterized by agents being able to autonomously initiate transactions with humans. This trend is already evident in specific domains, such as trading systems executing trades, smart home systems purchasing electricity based on time-of-use pricing, and automated inventory management systems replenishing stock based on demand forecasts.
(Maximal Extractable Value) bots are a typical representation of this stage. Over the past three years, these bots have processed over $430 million in transactions and executed nearly 200 million trades using .
bots are automated programs that can identify and exploit arbitrage, liquidation, and front-running opportunities in blockchain transactions. Traditional bots operate based on rule-based algorithms, monitoring the transaction pool, executing trades, and reordering transactions to capture profits.
These bots are leveraging machine learning techniques to predict market trends, optimize trade execution, and adapt to market changes in real-time, demonstrating the technological progress of cryptocurrency agents. In this process, play a crucial role, providing the stability and liquidity needed to execute high-frequency, low-risk strategies.
The increasing sophistication of these bots reflects a broader trend: agents, robots, and automated systems are becoming dominant in the blockchain ecosystem. The success of bots is just one example of the scalable application of , but it clearly demonstrates how agents and bots are beginning to widely impact market operations. The expansion of this influence foreshadows a more automated and intelligent era for the cryptocurrency market.
Stage 3: AI-AI Interaction (Future)
This stage is already emerging. In August this year, incubated the first-ever -to- transaction using .
As CEO Brian Armstrong stated, "While agents can't open bank accounts, they can have crypto wallets. They can now use on to transact instantly, globally, and for free with humans, merchants, or other ."
provide agents with an efficient, liquid, and permissionless transaction medium, while injects intelligence into blockchain operations, enabling a more intelligent, faster, and more efficient system. The impact of -to- transactions will be profound and far-reaching, and this area is worth continued observation.
The Perfect Fit Between Stablecoins and AI-Driven Use Cases
Programmable Liquidity
One of the most attractive use cases for currently is programmable liquidity, which enables agents to instantly access and deploy capital. Since 2024, the global market has seen over $1.3 trillion in transaction volume, with occupying a significant share of the liquidity.
Companies like and are innovating on the Automated Market Maker (AMM) mechanism by introducing a Voting Escrowed (ve) token model to promote community-driven liquidity allocation. By integrating with networks like and , this model ensures the efficiency and scalability of capital deployment.
can optimize the efficiency and adaptability of liquidity supply by implementing programmable liquidity, dynamically adjusting capital pool allocations, fee structures, and rewards based on market conditions and user behavior.
These developments have driven the continued growth of the DeFi market. According to VanEck's forecast, by 2025, DeFi will reach new highs, with DEX trading volume reaching $4 trillion and total locked-in value reaching $200 billion, mainly driven by the liquidity and adoption of AI-related tokens, consumer-oriented dApps, and tokenized assets.
Cross-border Payments
Cross-border payments are another area with huge potential for stablecoins and AI agents. The global remittance market reached $883 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $913 billion by 2025. Traditional remittances suffer from high fees (around 6% globally on average) and long processing times (potentially taking days). Stablecoins, with their instant settlement and extremely low costs, are disrupting this market. When combined with AI agents, the process becomes even more seamless: AI agents can analyze exchange rates, identify the most cost-effective routes, and execute transfers autonomously.
As Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire discussed at the Circle Forum in Hong Kong, stablecoins have become the ideal tool for AI agents due to their focus on programmability, trust, and transparency. They provide immutable transaction records on-chain, ensuring the auditability and verifiability of AI agent behavior. This programmable trust is crucial for connecting the human and machine economies.
AI agents, supported by this stable and programmable liquidity, are transforming these transactions into smarter, faster, and more cost-effective workflows. From optimizing DeFi strategies to automating global commerce, the synergy between stablecoins and AI agents is upgrading the way value flows across systems.
Future Outlook
As the share of AI-driven economic activity continues to grow, stablecoins are becoming the critical infrastructure for this transformation. Their stability, speed, and accessibility make them the ideal currency vehicle for AI agents, driving the formation of a smarter, more efficient, and more inclusive financial system.
Stablecoin-powered AI agents are simplifying complex financial tasks, enabling anyone with an internet connection to participate. Users only need to converse with the AI agent to create a wallet and use stablecoins for transactions, without needing to understand all the complexities of finance. For example, people lacking specialized financial knowledge can delegate the management of any amount of investment portfolio to an AI agent, earning stablecoin yields through DeFi. The users see only a dollar-based stable savings account generating passive income.
These agents can automatically rebalance investments, optimize yields, and even obtain loans, lowering the barriers to participating in decentralized finance behind the scenes, while presenting a simple user interface. This has profound implications for financial inclusion, especially in regions with limited traditional banking services.
In the payments domain, the efficiency gains are already starting to show. In 2023, the global payments industry processed $180 trillion in transactions, generating $2.4 trillion in revenue, primarily from fees.
AI agents, by automating the transaction and decision-making processes, are reducing the friction in financial workflows. With the near-zero transaction costs of stablecoins, AI agents can reduce this "payments tax," providing faster and more economical transaction methods for businesses and consumers. The Stablecoin-AI Fusion: A Three-Stage Revolution from Human-Machine Interaction to the Machine Economy
Even more exciting is the creation of new economic models and markets. As AI agents autonomously transact using stablecoins, entirely new industries and ecosystems are emerging, with the machine-to-machine economy (direct exchange of value between autonomous devices and systems) becoming a reality. This has the potential to significantly boost global economic productivity, reduce efficiency losses, and eliminate intermediary steps, freeing up resources for growth and innovation.
The fusion of stablecoins and AI agents is changing the way value flows, enabling unprecedented speed, intelligence, and efficiency in autonomous economic systems.
As the ecosystem evolves, stablecoins will continue to serve as the pillar of this revolution, providing the necessary stability and liquidity for the thriving of AI agents. When programmable money meets smart automation, this is just the beginning of the possibilities, and the future opportunities are as vast as the digital economy itself.
