数字资产备忘录：稳定币与机器支付

Gautam ChhuganMahika SaprSanskar ChindaliHarsh Misr The Digital Assets Memo: Stablecoins and machine payments(118/n) There have been a series of announcements and headlines around the idea of machine payments and the potential role of stablecoins.Coinbase is building the x402 agent payments protocol. Circle launched the nano payments infrastructure for agents. Stripe with itscohort of blockchain investments (Bridge/Privy) launched the Machine payments protocol on the Tempo blockchain. We share our viewon machine payments and how should investors see the impact on our coverage universe. We view agentic machine payments as an upside optionality for stablecoins. This is not a ‘here and now’ material impact on stablecoindemand, but some potential role of stablecoins in the agentic machine economy. This opportunity is also often wrongly framed as cardsvs. stablecoin opportunity. You really have to take a big leap of faith to believe stablecoins will become the dominant payments rail and thefuture will look like a hyper-effecient swarm of agents on the internet with their own wallets optimizing for purchase decisions. This future isunclear, and it is still too early to take that big leap of faith. However, a potential path is emerging where stablecoins will play some role in theagentic economy - 1. Agents on the internet will likely grow exponentially and some of them may operate without a human in the loop 2. There could be an infection in the growth or adaptation of service providers re-architecting their services towards agents or othermachines (human-readable to machine-readable) 3. Economic interactions could now choose to be packet size or opportunistic - you don't have to buy the whole monthly bundle and becauseof stablecoins you can ‘pay-per-use’. Thus, the growth of micro or nano transactions. 4. Stablecoins will likely make trillions of micro transactions viable by removing the restriction of fixed cost per transaction 5. Stablecoins on blockchain rails are programmable and stablecoins offer a route to build conditional payments for your agentautonomously without a human-in-the loop always. The traction so far on machine payments protocols has been limited. The stablecoin volume on Stripe’s machine payments protocol clocked$5K in one week of launch and not more than $25mn volume in last 30 days of Coinbase’s X402 protocol. To be fair, it is early in theevolution of agentic internet. Our investment case on stablecoins does not depend on the success of machine payments. Stablecoins are clocking record demandand volumes regardless (Exhibit 1-Exhibit 3). Circle’s USDC supply and volumes stand at all time-high against a backdrop of weak cryptomarkets. General payments use cases are growing exponentially - Business cross-border payments, consumer remittances and Card-linked stablecoins and neo-banking (Exhibit 4-Exhibit 6). Stablecoins are building an entire new category of fintechs built on stablecoin railsacross both consumer and business categories. See our note on Circle and stablecoins -Circle: Stablecoins for humans, enterprise andpotentially AI agents What should investors do? Investors should be exposed to stablecoins as a hyper-growth financial services category. Investors shouldnot bundle stablecoins with crypto anymore and realize stablecoin investment case is fast diverging from crypto markets. Both Circle and Coinbase remain best proxies for stablecoin upside through their USDC partnership. On agentic and machine payments, investors shouldsee stablecoins as an upside optionality - best to be exposed, but that is not the investment case. Regardless of which stablecoin payments protocol wins (Stripe or X402 or any other), we believe, Circle’s USDC being the most liquid andregulated stablecoin will see a dominant market share. It is argued that machines will not be bound by the largest stablecoin and wouldreduce differentiation between stablecoins. However, we believe, liquidity and distribution will be only remaining moat ensuring lowest friction in agentic payments. Also worth highlighting USDC now leads market share by transaction volumes despite being the 2ndin globalmarket share in supply (Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 3). What are machine payments? Machine payments refer to any financial transaction initiated, authorised, and settled by a software process or device rather than a humanbeing. These are different from the automated bill payments and recurring subscription which are authorized by humans but executedautomatically. Machine payments are intrinsically programmatic payments (one software pays another software/device) where decision topay, price negotiation and final settlement happens instantaneously. The internet was built for humans. Every payment rail, every checkout flow, every invoice and value transfer was designed around aperson clicking/tapping/swiping or typing to authorize the movement of money. A potential internet future is being built around softwareagents, autono