What was not viable in the 1990s, nor at any time since then, was something like micro-transactions for content. One obvious problem is that the fee structure of credit cards don’t allow for very small transactions; another problem is that the costs to product content are front-loaded, and the potential payoff is both back-loaded and unpredictable, making it impossible to make a living. The biggest problem of all, however, is that micro-transactions are anti-human: forcing a potential content consumer to continually decide on whether or not to pay for a piece of content is alienating, particularly when plenty of alternatives for their scarce attention exist.

Stablecoins solve several of the micro-transaction problems I listed above, including dramatically lower — or no — fees, and the fact that they are infinitely divisible, and thus can scale to very small amounts. Stablecoins, by virtue of being programmable, are also well-suited to agents; agents, meanwhile, are much more suited to micro-transactions, because they are, in the end, simply software making a decision, unencumbered by the very human feeling of decision paralysis.