a16z Partner Says Stablecoins Could Become the Payment Rail for AI Agents

Sam Ragsdale, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm a16z, said stablecoins may be well suited to power payments in the emerging AI agent economy because they are fast and inexpensive to use. In a post on X, Ragsdale argued that traditional card networks carry fixed costs that make very small transactions uneconomical. He gave one example: a 1-cent payment can cost 31 cents to process. That cost structure, he said, does not work for AI agents expected to make thousands of tiny payments each day. Ragsdale, who is also a co-founder of Merit Systems, expanded on the point in a video he shared. He said the friction embedded in traditional financial infrastructure could hold back the growth of an AI-driven microtransaction economy, while blockchain-based stablecoin payment networks offer a possible alternative.