How they fit Stablecoins and Lightning

The following is a publication and guest opinion of Bobby Shell, Board of Directors and Vice President of Voltage Marketing.

The AI ​​is not only helping humans: it is making decisions, administering resources and even spending money. But without instant and programmable payment rails, this new digital workforce is executed with obsolete infrastructure. Today’s AI systems are evolving autonomous agents capable of handling complex workflows independently. These agents plan, interpret, decide and execute operations, and are increasingly trusted and facing to make financial decisions as well.

But for these AI systems to really climb and prosper, they need access to immediate, scalable and safe digital money: Bitcoin.

Here is why the correct infrastructure battery is important, how it is already taking shape and why market leaders should now act to position their organizations for the future of money.

Inherited networks are being built. Is it scalable?

The current financial infrastructure is based on closed systems: centralized platforms such as Visa and Mastercard dominate payment processing, control access to their tools and protocols. While visa experiments with payment orchestration with AI and Mastercard develops dynamic transactions frames, these solutions are designed for holders, not innovative.

They are isolated, slow to adapt and exclude those who trust decentralized assets such as Bitcoin. These systems will never serve the edges of innovation, where creators, new companies and AI native companies are building the future, or those that measure the value in the solid money of Bitcoin.

This is where open rails emerge as the disruptive alternative.

There are some steps for a payment pile ready for AI:

• It begins with stablocoins, the predictable currency and without permission for digital work, allowing global teams and the agents of the transactions without problems, either dividing income between algorithms or paying content creators through the borders.
• Then comes the Bitcoin Lightning Network, the backbone of this pile. Lightning works beyond Visa/Mastercard limitations, offering instant settlements at an almost zero cost. When an AI agent negotiates a contract or autonomous drone that replaces replacement pieces, should not need a human to approve a transaction.
• Finally, open rails allow machines that pay the machines: Stablecoins become the “salary” for algorithmic work, while lightning acts as the frictionless payroll system. This is not simply a technical update, it is the release of the automation of the recruit of human bottle.

This battery redefines the trade of AI: the machines transaccan autonomously, humans collaborate without problems and the value flows instantaneously at scale, without banks, without friction.

AI agents are becoming financial actors

Today’s models are capable of much more than a year ago, with a growing prevalence in the workplace. They can execute project management tasks, file accounting records, orders supplies and even implement code. These systems not only instruct; They can act autonomously.

Modern platforms such as Marcos GPT and Langchain de OpenAi allow to build “agents” or workflows where the AI ​​system interacts autonomously with tools, API and external services. These agents often call external services, which require payment for each share. For example, a writing assistant could obtain grammar checks from a third -party service, or a travel planning bot could book a rental car.

IA operations require automated, precise and snapshot payments, however, the traditional billing, full of manual delays, heavy use models, initial commitments and non -programmable fiduciary rails that depend on intermediaries.

Stablecoins are the digital work currency

In 2024, the volume of Stablecoin exceeded $ 27.6 billion, rivaling or overcoming the main credit card networks.

Stablecoins avoid the volatility of cryptocurrency, resolves transactions instantly without delays, and allows a programmatic emission without interruptions, expenses and audits, which eliminates the need for manual reconciliation.

When AI has access to capital, especially in the form of payments for use and permits, it finds the best solution to the lowest cost in the shortest time. This payment per action reduces general expenses and minimizes waste, which gives the agents of the Open system a competitive advantage.
The result? Faster decisions, transparent expenses and measurable results, exactly what companies want from any operational layer.

Bitcoin: The base layer

Most Stablecoins are executed today on platforms such as Ethereum and Solana. But Bitcoin remains the safest and most reliable block chain, and the Lightning Network is fulfilling its original promise as the “payment scale layer.”

And the exciting thing is that there are already emerging use cases in which AI agents use the Bitcoin Lightning network for payments, mainly driven by the integration of AI with the L402 Lightning Network protocol and tools as Langchain, according to the pioneer by Lightning Labs.

Using the L402 protocol, an AI agent could consult a specialized AI for market analysis data, paying a small tariff in satiShis or stablecoins through lightning. The authentic and medical L402 protocol these payments, ensuring safe and instant transactions.

It can even be used to help with spam: a problem that people have been trying to solve from Adam Back’s hashcash in 1997. A server that houses a theory model could issue a “payment” response HTTP 402, which requests the applicant to pay through Lightning to proceed.

These use cases remain incipient, but show immense potential as they converge to and Bitcoin.
While Visa and Mastercard are building payment networks with AI, they remain closed and permissions systems. On the contrary, Lightning is alive, open and proven, used by some of the most important names in the industry.

Obstacles to overcome

The liquidity model of the Lightning Network, which requires prefinancing, could raise potential challenges for adoption as the main rails for AI -driven payments, particularly in high volume autonomous systems. If ray channels lack sufficient liquidity, payments that exceed the balance of a channel could fail or require complex routing through multiple nodes. Even small liquidity gaps could force payments to take convoluted routes in multiple nodes, increasing rates and latency.

In order for an AI agent to send payments autonomously, it must prepare the ray channels with sufficient liquidity. This requires initial capital (in BTC or Stablecoins) and technical experience to administer the channels, a barrier for small -scale AI projects or those without dedicated devotee equipment. Without easy ramps or liquidity groups, adoption could stagnate.

This type of obstacle highlights the demand for companies to offer services that fill these gaps to guarantee an experience without problems. Fortunately, the industry is full of passionate dead builders in this.

The future is without permission and programmable

In the end, the emergence of AI agents demands a new type of financial infrastructure, one that is open, scalable, safe and without permission. In the economy, the speed, the trust and the programability promoted by the AI ​​will separate the winners of the lagging. Those who are based on the open -ended payment rails today will not participate in the future of money, will define it.

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