The Cryptocurrency After Bitcoin — The Battle for Financial Infrastructure in the AI Agent Era

When people talk about the SaaS apocalypse driven by AI agents, the focus is mostly on which software companies will lose value. But signs of change are appearing on another front as well.

One of them is the restructuring of the payment layer. Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency, is currently about 46% below its all-time high of $125,245.57 reached in October 2025 as of April 2026. Meanwhile, what is quietly gaining attention is payment infrastructure for the AI agent era, including stablecoins as one type of cryptocurrency.

AI agents are changing not just software, but the way payments work — that is the point.

What the AI agent era requires is a means for AI agents to autonomously settle 5 cents, 30 cents, 50 cents instantly and at low cost. I believe the leading players will be stablecoins, 402-based payment protocols, and edge servers that can gate those payments.

What Can Be Confirmed as Fact

1. AI Agent Payments Have Already Entered the Implementation Phase

First, a quick explanation of the key terms. HTTP 402 Payment Required is a status code originally included in the Web specification, meaning “payment is needed.” It was unused for years, but is now getting attention as a foundation for AI agents to pay automatically. x402 is a protocol that uses this 402 response to settle payments instantly with stablecoins on the blockchain. It is backed by Coinbase. MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) is an open standard published by Stripe jointly with Tempo in March 2026, designed for agents to make programmatic payments.

Cloudflare’s official documentation describes “Agentic Payments,” where AI agents use HTTP 402 to pay directly for resources and services, supporting both x402 and MPP. (Cloudflare Agents docs)

What matters is that this is a published specification that developers can actually integrate. Cloudflare has laid out the HTTP content billing flow for x402 in concrete terms — the 402 response, payment instructions, verification, and retry — all at the implementation level. (Cloudflare Agents docs — Charge for HTTP content)

2. Competition Is Happening Across Multiple Layers

In March 2026, Stripe published MPP jointly with Tempo. This is an open standard for agents to make programmatic payments.

On the Cloudflare side, both x402 and MPP are supported within their own stack.

Protocol/merchant side: Stripe
Wallet/chain side: Coinbase
Edge/gateway side: Cloudflare

Each has different strengths. It is notable that Cloudflare has been quick to present “edge + 402 payments + AI crawler billing” as an integrated package. (Stripe Blog — Introducing the Machine Payments Protocol, Cloudflare Agents docs — MPP)

3. In AI-Era Payments, Cryptocurrency Fits Better Than Cards

The Information reported that the average transaction on Coinbase’s x402 is 31 cents, and that card fees become disadvantageous for such small payments.

Circle executives have also stated that traditional financial systems, with their closed structures and high compliance costs, are not well suited for agent use.

The key point here is that the cumbersome payment procedures designed for humans get in the way of AI agent payments. Account opening, card registration, API key issuance, identity verification — these are normal for humans, but too heavy for a world where AI agents pay each other by the second.

That is why programmable, divisible, instant on-chain payments are gaining attention. Cloudflare’s Agentic Payments also explicitly identifies the heaviness of traditional payment flows as a problem. (Cloudflare Agents docs)

4. Stablecoins Are Taking the Lead

About 99% of agent payments use USDC, and about 93% of actual transaction volume occurs on Base.

The Information reported that Coinbase and Zerohash are competing to issue a new stablecoin for Cloudflare.

In short, what the AI agent economy needs is not a volatile asset but a payment method that allows budget management. In that sense, stablecoins are already emerging as the more practical fit for AI agent payments.

5. AI Crawler Billing Is Already a Real Service — Cloudflare’s Toll

In July 2025, Cloudflare announced “Pay per crawl,” a system that lets site operators choose “Allow / Charge / Block” for AI crawlers. Cloudflare also explained that it acts as the Merchant of Record for collecting and distributing payments. (Cloudflare Blog — Introducing pay per crawl)

This is very significant. Because in AI-era payments, what matters is not just “which currency to pay in” — it is who authenticates AI agent access, who charges for it, and who permits passage after payment. It is about controlling the “gateway to payment.”

Cloudflare has a competitive advantage because it sits at that gateway.

Layer-by-Layer Analysis

It is important to look at AI agent payments through at least three layers.

1. Why Cryptocurrency Suits AI Agent Payments Better Than Cash or Bank Transfers

The reasons are:

Easy to execute programmatically through APIs and wallets
Less dependent on human business hours or manual approvals
Compatible with cross-border transactions and global service integration
Suited for high-frequency, small-value transaction design
Reduces intermediary costs that assume bank and card networks

AI agents do not open bank accounts, go through credit checks, or carry cards like humans do. So what fits them is money that can be sent directly from code. This is where cryptocurrency in general has an advantage.

As referenced above, Cloudflare’s Agentic Payments is built on exactly this premise — a world where machines pay machines directly.

2. Why Stablecoins Among All Cryptocurrencies

Stablecoins fit well because:

What AI agents need is not “a volatile asset” but “a coin that pays exactly as budgeted.”

Bitcoin’s price fluctuates too much for small payments and budget management. Stablecoins, on the other hand, have a stable price reference and are suited for mechanical payment designs of 5 cents, 30 cents, 50 cents. For AI, what matters is the role of stable value as currency.

3. Where to Block, Where to Let Through

Cloudflare has been moving fast on this front.

With Pay per crawl, Cloudflare has started making decisions at the network edge about “who accessed,” “whether there is intent to pay,” and “whether to allow or block.”

Moreover, it does this behind existing security layers — WAF (a firewall that blocks malicious access) and Bot Management (which identifies and controls bots). In other words, Cloudflare first filters out bad actors, then charges legitimate AI agents for access. Cloudflare is becoming something close to a checkpoint for the AI era.

Lining up these three layers makes the future picture much clearer.

Currency (Asset): Stablecoins
Standard (Protocol): x402 or MPP
Checkpoint (Toll): Edge infrastructure like Cloudflare

The stronger this structure becomes, the more Bitcoin shifts from “a working currency for economic activity” to “an asset for a different purpose.”

And stablecoins are likely to be chosen as the most suitable cryptocurrency for AI agents to settle payments autonomously.

My View

From here, this is my own thinking.

I believe that the AI agent era is a tailwind for cryptocurrency, but among them, only those designed for machine payments will actually be used.

What the AI agent economy truly demands is:

Stable pricing
Low fees
Machine-readable payment rules
Instant execution
Integration with access control

Against these requirements, what AI agents want is stablecoins like USDC, protocols like x402 and MPP, and gateways like Cloudflare.

Put differently, the winners of the AI agent era are shifting from “the currency itself” to who controls the payment standard, who controls the payment gateway, who controls the settlement and authentication behind it.

From this perspective, the question of who holds leadership over finance in the AI agent era is what matters. Coinbase is strengthening its position from exchange to agent financial infrastructure, Cloudflare from CDN to AI economy checkpoint, and Stripe is leveraging its merchant network for machine payments.

An Alternative View

Cryptocurrency still has many unresolved issues including regulation, price volatility, UX, and governance, and not all AI payments will necessarily move in this direction. Some companies may choose to redesign traditional card and fiat-based systems for AI use.

Still, what is interesting about this topic is that the stronger the demand for small, instant, autonomous payments becomes, the more friction traditional human-centered payment flows create.

As a result, in practice:

Stablecoins
Machine payment protocols
Authentication and billing at the edge

This combination is gradually becoming more realistic.

Summary

In the payments world, there is growing demand for cryptocurrencies suited to mechanical transactions for AI agents, and at the center of this trend, the combination of stablecoins, payment protocols, and edge infrastructure is emerging.

Established payment giants like Visa, major crypto companies like Coinbase, and infrastructure companies like Cloudflare and Stripe are all moving into this space simultaneously. I believe the battle for financial infrastructure dominance in the AI agent era has already begun.

And what is important is that this is not just a story about “a new payment method” — it is also a story about who will control the standards for AI to conduct economic activity on the internet.