From Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce to Apple, Amazon, Google, and more, tech giants are heavily investing in AI agents.
The vision for the future is clear: a highly automated world where these agents act as digital coworkers, handling everything from filing expenses and rescheduling meetings to drafting reports, booking travel, managing emails, and onboarding new employees.
This won’t be limited to the workplace; these agents can also assist with your personal life by tutoring children, planning vacations, and even monitoring your health.
In short, these agents will be everywhere around you, working alongside you, allowing you to focus your time and attention on things that truly matter. As Goldman Sachs Research recently noted, AI agents will “become the new user interface for knowledge workers,” and the profit pool of the software market will shift toward agents.
But as we hand over more and more responsibilities to these AI agents, stability and predictability will become critical. Volatility here won’t work as it can negatively affect efficiency and break trust.
In this context, stablecoins will play a key role in transferring value and facilitating transactions between agents.
Stablecoins maintain a consistent value, being pegged to fiat currencies like USD or commodities like gold. These stable crypto assets offer a consistent unit of account, reduce complexity, and enable low-friction execution. This allows agents to transact with confidence.
Stablecoins are borderless and always available, allowing agents to operate across different time zones and at any time of day. In addition to being ideal for global, autonomous coordination, stablecoins provide agents with sufficient liquidity to adapt to changing market conditions. These technological upgrades to global money movement also offer lower fees than traditional banking systems.
“They are essential for populations in countries with unstable currencies, dynamic governments, and limited access to global financial markets, offering a reliable store of value and a functional medium of exchange,”
said Rich Rines, Initial contributor at Core DAO, the first proof-of-stake (PoS) layer for Bitcoin, pioneering self-custodial Bitcoin staking and powering the leading Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.
He explained that, when it comes to cross-border payments, particularly in developing regions, stablecoins are proving to be a valuable option, reducing reliance on expensive remittance services and inefficient banking networks.
Many major banks and financial institutions are getting involved in stablecoins, which have proven to be a very lucrative business. Stablecoins have a collective market cap of $265 billion, with the leading issuer Tether (USDT) posting a staggering $5.2 billion profit in just the first two quarters of 2024.
As to how this revenue is generated, Rines explained that issuers typically generate revenue by investing reserves in short-term U.S. Treasuries or other highly liquid assets, ensuring stability while earning yield on those deposits. “The structure of these reserves can vary, but the fundamental model remains the same—stablecoins function as digital representations of fiat currency, with their value supported by traditional financial assets held in custody,” he stated.
Because stablecoins are backed by real-world assets, “custody in the physical world and compliance” becomes critical, said Rines, noting that while banks can use their existing infrastructure to safeguard reserves, the execution of transactions will happen on-chain.
Notably, stablecoins automatically give agents instant access to the vast blockchain space and its varied and innovative applications. “Stablecoins could be the foundational primitive that lets autonomous AI agents operate natively on-chain,” Rines said.
“Give an agent a stable balance, and it can fund gas fees, settle trades, trigger escrows, and vote in DAOs without worrying about price volatility. That stability unlocks new behaviors – treasury bots rebalancing around the clock and agents managing DeFi strategies. A dependable unit of account may be the catalyst that makes the entire agent economy work,” he surmised.
One of the biggest challenges to achieving this, however, is regulatory clarity. For years, crypto faced intense regulatory pressure. This is changing with the passage of the GENIUS Act by the US Senate to create a regulatory framework for USD-pegged cryptocurrency.
This initiative was introduced under President Trump’s current administration, which has taken several pro-crypto steps, including the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR). According to Rines, it “signals a major shift in the government’s stance, providing institutional investors with greater legitimacy and confidence in the regulatory landscape.”
The move aligns state and investor incentives, in turn, opening the door to more innovation and experimentation, said Rines.
“With Bitcoin gaining sovereign backing, staking-enabled ETFs could soon follow, allowing institutions to earn yield on their Bitcoin holdings without principal risk. Rather than stifling adoption, the U.S. would be signaling that institutions can comfortably gain exposure to Bitcoin and start exploring new holding strategies,” Rines added.
This regulatory clarity, combined with the growing acceptance of digital assets, is critical for enabling the next phase of the agent-powered economy.
Ultimately, fast, efficient, and accessible stablecoins will allow AI agents to move value around the world instantly and predictably, making them the financial foundation of the autonomous, agentic economy and ensuring its smooth operation.
