Stablecoins have evolved from trading tools and savings vehicles into core payments infrastructure. Regulatory clarity boosted issuance, transaction velocity has doubled, and consumer-to-business use is surging. Non-USD variants and intra-country transfers now outpace purely cross-border flows.

AI agents now execute tasks and transactions across systems but lack portable identity, programmable payments, and verifiable governance. Public ledgers, wallets, and stablecoins offer on-chain credentials, embedded payments, and transparent execution logs to ensure agents act as accountable economic actors.

The article shows how stablecoins and public blockchains cut the unit cost of payments and compliance, driving more global adoption instead of displacing existing systems. It argues that shared ledgers collapse reconciliation and regulatory burdens, unlocking new markets and users much like cheaper steam engines boosted coal demand.

This article discusses how stablecoins are becoming mainstream for online and international payments, drawing parallels to the impact of WhatsApp on messaging costs. It explores the potential for stablecoins to transform financial transactions and reinforce the dollar's dominance in the global economy.

HTTP 402, a long-forgotten status code meant for facilitating seamless online payments, is being revitalized through modern technologies like stablecoins and blockchain. The original vision for HTTP 402 aimed to enable micropayments as a native feature of the web, avoiding reliance on advertising-based revenue models, which has been hindered by technical and economic challenges since the 1990s. New standards propose a pathway to integrate payments directly into the web protocol, potentially transforming the online economy.