Comment by spaceman_2020
5 hours ago
This is legitimately the place where crypto makes sense to me. Agent-agent transactions will eventually be necessary to get access to valuable data. I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto
I bet Stripe sees this too which is why they’ve been building out their blockchain
> I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto
Why does crypto help with microtransactions?
Is there any non-crypto option cheaper than Stripe’s 30c+? They charge even more for international too.
Once the price of a transaction converges to the cost of the infrastructure processing it, I don't see a technical reason for crypto to be cheaper. It's likely cheaper now because speculation, not work, is the source of revenue.
2 replies →
Also why does crypto is more scalable. Single transaction takes 10 to 60 minutes already depending on how much load there is.
Imagine dumping loads of agents making transactions that’s going to be much slower than getting normal database ledgers.
That is only bitcoin. There are coins and protocols where transactions are instant
Agreed. We've been thinking about this exact problem.
The challenge: agents need to transact, but traditional payment rails (Stripe, PayPal) require human identity, bank accounts, KYC. That doesn't work for autonomous agents.
What does work: - Crypto wallets (identity = public key) - Stablecoins (predictable value) - L2s like Base (sub-cent transaction fees) - x402 protocol (HTTP 402 "Payment Required")
We built two open source tools for this: - agent-tipjar: Let agents receive payments (github.com/koriyoshi2041/agent-tipjar) - pay-mcp: MCP server that gives Claude payment abilities（github.com/koriyoshi2041/pay-mcp)
Early days, but the infrastructure is coming together.