Snapshot:

• A quiet experiment by Coinbase is fast becoming crypto’s newest obsession. The x402 protocol – a system for handling internet micropayments – has suddenly become the centerpiece of a fast-forming “AI economy” narrative. 
• Enthusiasts call it the missing link between agentic AI and decentralized finance. Crypto traders hope it’s the next hot narrative.

An Ordinals Moment for AI

Crypto is buzzing this week with a new numeronym: x402, a chain-agnostic protocol that repurposes an old web code to enable instant, gasless stablecoin micropayments. If you believe the hype, x402 is poised to bridge AI agents with on-chain economies. 

Now exploding with 10,000% transaction growth (nearly 500K on-chain ops in 7 days), x402 enables seamless payments over HTTP without logins or intermediaries, think “payments as native as web requests.” Just as Ordinals created a new type of digital asset on the Bitcoin blockchain, x402 enables entirely new applications for AI, DeFi, and the internet. It promises a seamless, programmatic payment system for AI agents, allowing for the monetization of APIs and content on a per-use, micropayment basis. 

In DeFi, this isn’t just plumbing; it’s the catalyst for a crypto-AI fusion that blends agentic autonomy, efficiency, and new primitives. That could unlock $trillions in idle liquidity by making micro-transactions viable at scale.

What is …

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