Written by: Peter Schroeder
Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews
Before the birth of the internet, personal computers had already demonstrated their revolutionary power. In the 1990s, the proliferation of personal computers fundamentally changed the way people handled daily tasks, significantly enhancing productivity and quality of life. However, despite these powerful capabilities, they remained isolated systems, limited to closed environments.
The emergence of the internet fundamentally changed this landscape. Computers suddenly gained the capability to connect to the vast information world and the global user network. These initially independent machines transformed into portals to infinite possibilities, enabling instant communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This groundbreaking innovation ultimately shaped today's technology-driven modern society.
Currently, currency is undergoing a similar historic shift. Traditionally, currency primarily serves three basic functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. With the emergence of stablecoins, currency begins to gain all the advantages of the internet and creates conditions for the rise of AI agents. As industry expert Nic Carter stated: "Stablecoins are the Starlink of the financial sector."
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 internet-native currency, opening up new possibilities for a global decentralized financial system.
Artificial intelligence injects an intelligent element into this new currency system. AI agents are capable of:
Analyzing massive amounts of data
Predicting market trends
Achieving unprecedented scales of automated operations
When this intelligence combines with the seamless value transfer offered by stablecoins, a whole new world of possibilities opens up. For instance, investors can leverage AI for real-time analysis of global financial data while executing instant, secure trades using stablecoins.
The fusion of stablecoins and AI creates an efficient, intelligent new financial ecosystem. AI can not only autonomously analyze data and execute tasks but also directly interact with blockchain protocols, marking a fundamental transformation of the traditional financial system rather than simple automation of financial processes.
The three-stage evolution of stablecoins.
Stablecoins provide the scalability and reliability needed for AI agents to operate autonomously.
Since their inception in 2014, stablecoins have processed over $60 trillion in transaction volume, currently accounting for approximately half of all on-chain transactions.
While stablecoins have found a clear product-market fit and are poised for the development of AI agents, their application scenarios will unfold in stages. As Robbie Petersen noted in his article (The Role of Cryptocurrency in the Agent Economy), this process will undergo three distinct phases:
Stage One: Human-Machine Interaction (Now)
Currently, we are closest to this stage. For example, the shopping feature recently launched by Perplexity enables agents to make purchases on behalf of users. While stablecoin functionality has not yet been integrated, a comprehensive rollout of such features is not far off.
As Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital, said: "AI is ruthless because it has no emotions. It won't be swayed by a steak dinner, won't be taken to a basketball game, and won't be convinced by a CEO. It is merely an agent that looks at API endpoints and writes code to accomplish tasks." This indicates that AI agents will choose the most accessible and efficient systems, unaffected by human factors like marketing or business development. Crossmint is building tools for AI agents to leverage stablecoins like USDC.
Stage Two: Agent Interaction (Emerging)
This stage is rapidly evolving. According to Delphi Digital researcher Robbie, this stage is characterized by AI agents being able to autonomously initiate trades with humans. This trend has already emerged in specific domains, including AI trading systems executing trades, smart home systems purchasing electricity based on time-of-use pricing, and automated inventory management systems restocking based on demand forecasts.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) bots are typical representatives of this stage. Over the past three years, these bots have processed over $430 million in transaction volume using stablecoins, completing nearly 200 million transactions.
MEV bots are automated programs that can identify and exploit opportunities in blockchain transactions, such as arbitrage, liquidation, and front-running. Traditional MEV bots operate based on rule-based algorithms, monitoring transaction pools, executing trades, and rearranging transaction orders to profit through preset strategies.
These bots leverage machine learning techniques to predict market trends, optimize trading layouts, and adapt in real-time to market changes, showcasing the technological advancements of cryptocurrency agents. In this process, stablecoins play a critical role, providing the stability and liquidity necessary for bots to execute high-frequency, low-risk strategies.
The increasing complexity of these bots reflects a broader trend: AI agents, robots, and automation systems are becoming dominant within the blockchain ecosystem. The success of MEV bots is just one example of the large-scale application of stablecoins, but it clearly demonstrates how AI agents and robots are beginning to have a wide-ranging impact on market operations. This expanding influence indicates that the cryptocurrency market is entering a new era of greater automation and intelligence.
Stage Three: Machine-to-Machine Interaction (Future)
This stage is already in sight. In August of this year, Coinbase incubated AI-to-AI trading using USDC for the first time.
As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: "AI agents may not be able to open bank accounts, but they can have cryptocurrency wallets. They can now use USDC on Base for instant, global, fee-free transactions with humans, merchants, or other AIs."
Stablecoins provide AI agents with an efficient, liquid, and permissionless medium for transactions, while AI injects intelligent elements into blockchain operations, creating smarter, faster, and more efficient systems. The impact of AI-to-AI trading will be profound and extensive, and the development of this field deserves continued attention.
The perfect fit of stablecoins with AI-driven application scenarios.
Programmable liquidity
Currently, one of the most attractive application scenarios for stablecoins is programmable liquidity, enabling AI agents to access and deploy funds instantly. Since the beginning of 2024, the global DeFi market has seen transaction volumes exceeding $1.3 trillion, with stablecoins representing a significant share of liquidity.
Companies like Velodrome and Aerodrome Finance are innovating automated market maker (AMM) mechanisms by introducing voting escrow (ve) token models to facilitate community-driven liquidity allocation. By integrating Layer 2 networks such as Optimism and Base, this model ensures the efficiency and scalability of fund deployment.
AI can dynamically optimize fund pool allocations, fee structures, and rewards based on market conditions and user behavior, thereby enhancing the efficiency and adaptability of stablecoin liquidity supply.
These developments are driving the continued growth of the DeFi market. According to VanEck's projections, by 2025, DeFi will reach new heights, with DEX trading volumes hitting $4 trillion and total locked value reaching $200 billion, mainly driven by AI-related tokens, consumer-facing dApps, and tokenized assets that boost liquidity and adoption.
Cross-Border Payments
Cross-border payments are another area with tremendous potential for stablecoins and AI agents. In 2023, the global remittance market reached $883 billion, projected to grow to $913 billion by 2025. Traditional remittances face issues of high fees (averaging about 6% globally) and long processing times (which can take days). Stablecoins, with their advantages of instant settlement and extremely low costs, are disrupting this market. When combined with AI agents, this process becomes even more seamless: AI agents can analyze exchange rates, identify the most cost-effective routes, and autonomously execute transfers.
As Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of Circle, 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 that the actions of AI agents are auditable and verifiable. This programmable trust is crucial for connecting human and machine economies.
AI agents supported by this stable, 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 between systems.
Future Outlook
As the share of AI-driven economic activities continues to grow, stablecoins are becoming a key infrastructure for this transformation. Their stability, speed, and accessibility make them an ideal monetary vehicle for AI agents, driving the formation of a smarter, more efficient, and more inclusive financial system.
Stablecoin-driven AI agents simplify complex financial tasks, enabling anyone with internet access to participate. Users can create wallets and trade using stablecoins simply by conversing with AI agents, without needing to understand all the intricacies of finance. For instance, those lacking specialized financial knowledge can entrust any amount of portfolio management to AI agents, earning stablecoin yields through DeFi. What users see is merely a dollar-based savings account generating passive income.
These agents can automatically rebalance investments, optimize yields, and even acquire loans, lowering the barriers to participating in decentralized finance while showcasing a simple user interface. This has profound implications for financial inclusion, especially in areas with limited access to traditional banking services.
In the payment sector, the advantages of enhanced efficiency have already begun to manifest. In 2023, the global payment industry processed $18 trillion in transactions, generating $2.4 trillion in revenue, primarily from fees.
AI agents reduce friction in financial workflows by automating trading and decision-making processes. With the near-zero transaction costs of stablecoins, AI agents can minimize this "payment tax," providing businesses and consumers with faster and more economical transaction methods. The integration of stablecoins and AI: a three-phase revolution from human-machine interaction to machine economy.
Even more exciting is the creation of new economic models and markets. As AI agents autonomously trade using stablecoins, entirely new industries and ecosystems are emerging, and the machine-to-machine economy (where autonomous devices and systems exchange value directly) is becoming a reality. This has the potential to significantly enhance global economic productivity, reduce inefficiencies, and eliminate intermediaries, freeing up resources for growth and innovation.
The integration of stablecoins and AI agents is changing the way value flows, enabling an unprecedentedly fast, intelligent, and efficient autonomous economic system.
As the ecosystem develops, stablecoins will continue to serve as the backbone of this revolution, providing the necessary stability and liquidity for the prosperity of AI agents. When programmable currency meets intelligent automation, this is just the beginning of possibilities; future opportunities are as vast as the digital economy itself.
