Original article by: Peter Schroeder
Original translation: Yuliya, PANews
Before the birth of the Internet, personal computers had demonstrated their revolutionary power. In the 1990s, the popularity of personal computers completely changed the way people handle daily tasks, significantly improving work efficiency and quality of life. However, despite their power, these computers are still isolated systems whose capabilities are limited to a closed environment.
The advent of the Internet changed this landscape forever. Computers suddenly gained the ability to connect to a vast world of information and a global network of users. These once independent machines were transformed into a portal to infinite possibilities, enabling instant communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This groundbreaking innovation ultimately shaped today's modern, technology-driven society.
At present, currency is undergoing a similar historical transition. Traditionally, currency mainly undertakes three basic functions: medium of exchange, value storage and 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 said: Stablecoins are Starlink in the financial field.
Stablecoins now have a market capitalization of $200 billion and process trillions of dollars in transactions each month. By combining the stability of fiat currencies with the programmability of digital assets, stablecoins have become the infrastructure for native Internet currencies, opening up new possibilities for a global decentralized financial system.
Artificial intelligence brings intelligence to this new monetary system. AI agents can:
Analyzing massive amounts of data
Predicting market trends
Automate operations at unprecedented scale
When this intelligence is combined with the seamless value transfer provided by stablecoins, a whole new world of possibilities opens up. For example, investors can use AI to perform real-time analysis of global financial data while using stablecoins for instant and secure trade execution.
The combination of stablecoins and AI creates an efficient and intelligent new financial ecosystem. AI can not only analyze data and perform tasks autonomously, but also interact directly with blockchain protocols. This is not a simple automation of financial processes, but a fundamental change to the traditional financial system.
The three-stage evolution of stablecoins
Stablecoins provide AI agents with the scalability and reliability they need to operate autonomously.
Since their introduction in 2014, stablecoins have processed over $60 trillion in transaction volume and currently account for approximately half of all on-chain transactions.
While stablecoins have found clear product-market fit and are ready for the development of AI agents, their use cases will unfold in stages. As Robbie Petersen explains in (The Role of Cryptocurrencies in the Agent Economy), this process will go through three distinct stages:
Phase 1: Human-Computer Interaction (Present)
The closest thing to this is currently. For example, Perplexity’s recently launched shopping feature enables agents to make purchases on behalf of users. While stablecoin functionality has not yet been integrated, the full rollout of such features is not far off.
As Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya said: AI is ruthless because it has no emotions. It will not be impressed by a steak dinner, taken to a basketball game, or persuaded by a CEO. It is just an agent that looks at an API endpoint and writes code to get the job done. This shows that AI agents will choose the most accessible and efficient system without being influenced by human factors such as marketing and business development. Crossmint is building tools so that AI agents can take advantage of stablecoins such as USDC.
Phase 2: Robot-Human Interaction (Emerging)
This phase is developing rapidly. According to Robbie, a researcher at Delphi Digital, this phase is characterized by AI agents being able to autonomously initiate transactions with humans. This trend has already emerged in specific areas, including AI trading systems executing transactions, smart home systems purchasing electricity based on time-of-use electricity prices, and automated inventory management systems replenishing stocks based on demand forecasts.
MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) bots are typical representatives of this stage. In the past three years, these bots have processed more than $430 million in trading volume using stablecoins and completed nearly 200 million transactions.
MEV robots are automated programs that identify and exploit opportunities such as arbitrage, liquidation, and front-running in blockchain transactions. Traditional MEV robots operate based on rule-based algorithms, monitoring trading pools, executing transactions, and reordering transactions to make profits through preset strategies.
These robots use machine learning technology to predict market trends, optimize trading layouts, and adapt to market changes in real time, demonstrating the technological advancement of cryptocurrency brokers. In this process, stablecoins play a key role, providing robots with the stability and liquidity needed to execute high-frequency, low-risk strategies.
The increasing sophistication of this robot reflects a broader trend: AI agents, robots, and automated systems are becoming dominant in the blockchain ecosystem. The success of the MEV robot is just one example of the large-scale application of stablecoins, but it clearly shows how AI agents and robots are beginning to widely influence market operations. This expansion of influence indicates that the cryptocurrency market is entering a new era of greater automation and intelligence.
Phase 3: Machine-to-machine interaction (future)
This phase is already beginning to take shape. In August this year, Coinbase incubated its first AI-to-AI transaction using USDC.
As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: Although AI agents cannot open bank accounts, they can have cryptocurrency wallets. They can now use USDC on Base to conduct instant, global and free transactions with humans, merchants or other AI.
Stablecoins provide an efficient, liquid, and permissionless medium of exchange for AI agents, while AI injects intelligence into blockchain operations, enabling smarter, faster, and more efficient systems. The impact of AI on AI transactions will be far-reaching and widespread, and developments in this area deserve continued attention.
Stablecoins are a perfect match for AI-driven application scenarios
Programmable liquidity
Currently, one of the most attractive application scenarios for stablecoins is programmable liquidity, which enables AI agents to access and deploy funds instantly. Since 2024, the global DeFi market has exceeded $1.3 trillion in transaction volume, of which stablecoins account for a considerable share of liquidity.
Companies like Velodrome and Aerodrome Finance are innovating automated market maker (AMM) mechanisms by introducing a voting custody (ve) token model that facilitates community-driven liquidity allocation. By integrating Layer 2 networks such as Optimism and Base, this model ensures efficient and scalable capital deployment.
AI can improve the efficiency and adaptability of stablecoin liquidity provision by enabling programmable liquidity and dynamically optimizing fund pool allocation, fee structure, and rewards based on market conditions and user behavior.
These developments have fueled the continued growth of the DeFi market. According to VanEck’s forecast, by 2025, DeFi will hit new highs, with DEX trading volume reaching $4 trillion and total locked value reaching $200 billion, mainly driven by liquidity and adoption driven by AI-related tokens, consumer-facing dApps, and tokenized assets.
Cross-border payments
Cross-border payments is 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% on average globally) and long processing times (which can take days). Stablecoins are disrupting this market with their instant settlement and extremely low costs. When combined with AI agents, the process becomes even more seamless: AI agents can analyze exchange rates, identify the most cost-effective routes, and autonomously execute transfers.
As Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire discussed at the Circle Forum in Hong Kong, stablecoins are ideal tools for AI agents because of their focus on programmability, trust, and transparency. They provide an immutable record of transactions on-chain, ensuring that the actions of AI agents are auditable and verifiable. This programmable trust is critical to connecting the human and machine economies.
AI agents, powered 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 economic activity driven by AI continues to increase, stablecoins are becoming a critical 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-powered AI agents make complex financial tasks accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Users can create wallets and transact with stablecoins simply by talking to an AI agent, without having to understand all the complexities of finance. For example, someone who lacks professional financial knowledge can delegate portfolio management of any amount to an AI agent and earn stablecoin returns through DeFi. All the user sees is a stable dollar-based savings account generating passive income.
These agents can automatically rebalance investments, optimize returns, and even obtain loans, lowering the barrier to entry for participating in decentralized finance behind the scenes while presenting a simple user interface. This has far-reaching implications for financial inclusion, especially in areas with limited coverage of traditional banking services.
In the payments sector, the benefits of increased efficiency are already starting to emerge. In 2023, the global payments industry processed $1.8 quadrillion in transactions and generated $2.4 trillion in revenue, mostly 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 reduce this payment tax, providing businesses and consumers with a faster and more affordable way to transact.
Even more exciting is the creation of new economic models and markets. As AI agents trade autonomously using stablecoins, entirely new industries and ecosystems are emerging, and a machine-to-machine economy (where autonomous devices and systems directly exchange value) is becoming a reality. This has the potential to significantly increase global economic productivity, reduce efficiency losses and eliminate intermediaries, freeing up resources for growth and innovation.
The fusion of stablecoins and AI agents is changing the way value flows, enabling autonomous economic systems that are unprecedentedly fast, smart, and efficient.
As the ecosystem develops, stablecoins will continue to serve as the backbone of this revolution, providing the necessary stability and liquidity for AI agents to thrive. When programmable money meets intelligent automation, this is just the beginning of the possibilities, and the opportunities ahead are as vast as the digital economy itself.
