Following Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s remarks that AI is moving beyond chatbots to perform real business tasks, AI-related cryptocurrencies surged. Fetch, NEAR, and World posted double-digit gains as markets responded to the prospect of autonomous AI agents.
X402 is described as a blockchain-based autonomous payment protocol that allows AI agents to pay and settle costs in crypto without human involvement. Developed by Coinbase and Cloudflare, it aims to deliver 2-second payments in stablecoins when a 402 response is encountered. AI agents have executed about 140 million payments in the past nine months, with 98.6% settled in USDC.
Traditional payment rails are ill-suited for micro-payments due to high minimum fees. X402 transactions cost about $0.015 on Coinbase’s Base network and about $0.003 on Solana. Google, AWS, Visa, and Circle have begun integrating or testing X402: Google is incorporating the protocol into its AP2 framework; AWS with Bedrock; Circle launching a nano-payments network; Visa examining a Trust Agent Protocol to connect AI agents with merchants.
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