Stablecoins and wallets are being redesigned for systems where humans are no longer the primary users - Tearsheet

AI agents are expected to become economic actors that initiate, route, and execute transactions without human involvement. This demand shifts crypto-native payments and settlement infrastructure away from retail users and institutions toward agent-driven commerce. Circle is building infrastructure for machine-native transactions through an Agent Stack that includes programmable wallets, micropayment rails, and transaction capabilities for extremely small value transfers. The infrastructure is designed for continuous streams of low-value interactions across APIs and automated systems, rather than human payment behavior. USDC is positioned to function as a real-time unit of value embedded directly into workflows. Coinbase is building complementary wallet and transaction-rail infrastructure for those agents.

"The next wave of demand for crypto-native payments and settlement infrastructure does not come from retail users or even institutions. It comes from AI agents that can initiate, route, and execute transactions on their own. That shift is pulling two of the sector's most important crypto infrastructure players, Circle and Coinbase, toward the same conclusion. Both now believe that AI agents will become economic actors in their own right."

"Circle is creating the underlying infrastructure for AI agents. It is doing this through its Agent Stack, a set of infrastructure tools designed for machine-native commerce. It includes programmable wallets, micropayment rails, and transaction capabilities that allow value transfers at extremely small increments, down to fractions of a cent. The design reflects a simple constraint. AI agents will not behave like humans."

"Traditional payment rails struggle with that model because they are built for human behavior. Circle is building for a different cadence entirely. The firm is pushing value transfer closer to computation speed. In this model, USDC stops behaving like a digital dollar for people and starts functioning as a unit of value that software systems can execute against in real time, embedded directly into workflows rather than layered on top of them."

"The aim is to make digitized money readable and spendable by machines operating at their own speed. One is building programmable digital money for AI agents. The other is building the wallets and transaction rails that those agents will use."

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