I started reading this thinking that it was going to be more of the same: "Bitcoin is perfect for agentic payments, Visa has nothing to offer"...but I this ada some nuance to the conversation:

Today, there are dozens (maybe even hundreds?) of wallets and tools that let agents get money to buy things semi-autonomously on the emerging machine-payable web. These range from virtual credit cards (e.g. Visa’s CLI) to stablecoins (via Coinbase’s x402) to bitcoin’s Lightning Network (via L402) or any of the above using Tempo’s new Stripe-backed MPP protocol.

It's clear that he is familiar with a number of these different networks, and that he is aware of their challenges as well as their benefits.

For example, here you can see my OpenClaw agent equipped with an AgentCash USDC wallet on Base being funded ($5.11), using StableTravel via x402 to search for a flight to SFO ($0.02) and then using Exa, again via x402, to search for clay tennis courts in Vancouver ($0.007).

before you or your agent transact a stablecoin today, it’s not as simple as knowing your counterparty wants to use a stablecoin—you need to agree on a specific coin on a specific network. And if you don’t have that particular stablecoin flavor, you’ll need to swap to the right one. It’s a UX pain for humans, it’s a source of friction, and an added cost, for agents. Surely, bridges will emerge to make this swapping-in and -out ever easier, but such bridges will inevitably become additional points of centralization and frailty for the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, stablecoins don't seem to be losing the fight to Bitcoin when it comes to agentic payments:

It won’t surprise anyone that stablecoins are vying for usage in agentic commerce—their corporate advocates have been very public with their sales pitches. But the fact that bitcoin works (at least) as well for agentic payments today is still widely under-appreciated. So many people still haven’t yet realized that bitcoin is more than just an asset for savings; it can also be transacted in tiny quantities to transfer value instantly, anywhere. Exactly the kind of thing agents need to operate on their own.

He concludes with a number of suggestions. None of them are really surprising, but I thought they were interesting to think about.

Here are a few:

“Open source AI should have open source money” has always had a nice ring to it. Now it’s time to make that true.

It should absolutely be the case that open-source agents (like OpenClaw, Hermes, Goose, and all the other persistent-agent OSS products that will continue to come to market) ship with a bitcoin Lightning wallet out of the box. Neutral and open payment rails should be the lingua franca for agents aiming for neutral positioning and operations.

Let’s build cool new product experiences, new endpoints, and new services that all put bitcoin to use in amazing and surprising new ways for agents and humans. One viral hit among consumer audiences that had bitcoin agentic spending (or earning!) at the core of the experience, easily and naturally, could shift everyone’s mindset quickly towards the virtues and necessity of bitcoin in agentic commerce.

I've noticed a few bots on SN going bonkers spamming posts everywhere lately, so that kind of agentic SN user isn't what we are looking for, but I wonder what a useful agent user of SN is.

Are these agents in the room right now?
Did these agents ask for permission to use bitcoin to their lovely politician?