Author of the original text: Peter Schroeder
Text compiled by Yuliya, PANews
Before the birth of the Internet, personal computers had already demonstrated their revolutionary power. In the 1990s, the widespread use of personal computers fundamentally changed the way people handle 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 capabilities limited to closed environments.
The emergence of the Internet has 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 have transformed into portals to infinite possibilities, enabling instant communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This groundbreaking innovation has 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 emergence of stablecoins, money has begun to acquire all the advantages of the Internet and has created the conditions for the rise of AI agents. As industry expert Nic Carter said, "Stablecoins are the Starlink of finance."
The market capitalization of stablecoins has now reached $200 billion, processing trillions of dollars in transactions monthly. By combining the stability of fiat currencies and the programmability of digital assets, stablecoins have become the infrastructure for native internet money, opening up new possibilities for the global decentralized finance system.
Artificial intelligence has injected intelligent elements into this new monetary system. AI 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 stablecoins, a whole new realm of possibilities is unlocked. For example, investors can use AI to analyze real-time global financial data while leveraging stablecoins for instant, secure transaction execution.
The combination of stablecoins and AI has created a new, efficient, and intelligent financial ecosystem. AI can not only autonomously analyze data and execute tasks, but also directly interact with blockchain protocols, which is not just financial process automation, but a fundamental transformation of the traditional financial system.
The Three-Stage Evolution of Stablecoins
Stablecoins provide the scalability and reliability that AI agents need to operate autonomously.
Since their inception in 2014, stablecoins have processed over $60 trillion in transaction volume, currently accounting for about half of the total on-chain transaction volume.
While stablecoins have found a clear product-market fit and are ready for the development of AI 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 situation. 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 not far away.
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 persuaded by a CEO. It's just an agent that looks at API endpoints and writes code to get a job done." This indicates that AI agents will choose the most accessible and efficient systems, unaffected by factors such as marketing or business development. Crossmint is building tools to enable AI agents to leverage stablecoins like USDC.
Stage 2: AI-Human Interaction (Emerging)
This stage is rapidly evolving. According to Robbie, a researcher at Delphi Digital, this stage is characterized by AI agents being able to initiate transactions with humans autonomously. This trend is already evident in specific areas, such as AI trading systems executing trades, smart home systems purchasing electricity based on time-of-use pricing, and automated inventory management systems replenishing based on demand forecasts.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) bots are a typical example of this stage. Over the past three years, these bots have processed over $430 million in transactions and executed nearly 200 million trades using stablecoins.
MEV bots are automated programs that can identify and exploit arbitrage, liquidation, and front-running opportunities in blockchain transactions. Traditional MEV bots operate based on rule-based algorithms, monitoring the transaction pool, executing trades, and reordering transactions to capture profits.
These bots are using machine learning techniques to predict market trends, optimize trade layouts, and adapt to market changes in real-time, demonstrating the technological progress of cryptocurrency agents. In this process, stablecoins 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: AI agents, robots, and automated systems are becoming dominant in the blockchain ecosystem. The success of MEV bots is just one example of the scalable application of stablecoins, but it clearly demonstrates how AI agents and bots are beginning to widely impact market operations. The expansion of this influence foreshadows a new era of increased automation and intelligence in the cryptocurrency market.
Stage 3: AI-AI Interaction (Future)
This stage is already emerging. In August this year, Coinbase incubated its first AI-to-AI transaction using USDC.
As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, "While AI agents can't open bank accounts, they can have crypto wallets. They can now use USDC on Base to transact instantly, globally, and for free with humans, merchants, or other AIs."
Stablecoins provide AI agents with an efficient, liquid, and permissionless transaction medium, while AI injects intelligence into blockchain operations, enabling smarter, faster, and more efficient systems. The impact of AI-to-AI transactions will be far-reaching and widespread, and this area is worth continued observation.
The Perfect Fit Between Stablecoins and AI-Driven Use Cases
Programmable Liquidity
Currently, one of the most attractive use cases for stablecoins is programmable liquidity, which allows AI agents to instantly access and deploy capital. Since 2024, the global DeFi market has seen over $1.3 trillion in trading volume, with stablecoins occupying a significant share of that liquidity.
Companies like Velodrome and Aerodrome Finance are innovating automated market maker (AMM) mechanisms by introducing vote-escrowed (ve) token models to promote community-driven liquidity allocation. By integrating with Layer 2 networks like Optimism and Base, this model ensures the efficiency and scalability of capital deployment.
AI can optimize the allocation of liquidity pools, fee structures, and rewards based on market conditions and user behavior, thereby enhancing the efficiency and adaptability of stablecoin liquidity supply through programmable liquidity.
These developments have driven the continued growth of the DeFi market. According to VanEck's projections, by 2025, DeFi will reach new highs, with DEX trading volume reaching $4 trillion and total value locked reaching $200 billion, primarily driven by the liquidity and adoption of AI-related tokens, consumer-facing dApps, and tokenized assets.
Cross-Border Payments
Cross-border payments are another area with immense 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 lengthy 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 discussed by Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire 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 on-chain transaction records, 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 simplify complex financial tasks, enabling anyone with an internet connection to participate. Users can simply converse with AI agents to create wallets and use stablecoins for transactions, without needing to understand all the intricacies of finance. For example, individuals lacking specialized financial knowledge can delegate their investment portfolios to AI agents, earning stablecoin yields through DeFi. Users would see only a dollar-based stable savings account generating passive income.
These agents can automatically rebalance investments, optimize returns, 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 benefits of increased efficiency are already emerging. In 2023, the global payments industry processed $180 trillion in transactions, generating $2.4 trillion in revenue, primarily from fees.
AI agents, by automating transaction and decision-making processes, reduce 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 options for businesses and consumers.
Even more exciting are the new economic models and markets being created. As AI agents autonomously transact using stablecoins, entirely new industries and ecosystems are emerging, with machine-to-machine economies (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 transforming 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 cornerstone 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, with opportunities as vast as the digital economy itself.
