Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Crypto + A.I. Just Broke the Internet!🚀x402’s Viral Surge with Coinbase INTERVIEW

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Crypto + A.I. Just Broke the Internet!🚀x402’s Viral Surge with Coinbase INTERVIEW · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into it today. You've heard of it. It's
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: probably brand new on your radar. It's called x four
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: O two and it has exploded onto the payment rail scene.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We're going to break it down for you and let's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: just jump into it today. We brought one of the
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: senior engineers over from Coinbase to break this down, Eric Repel,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: who's coming in from Coinbase, the developer platform.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks for jumping in. Great to meet you, Paul.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: All right, So a couple of things I want to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: get into first. For a lot of people, they may
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: not completely understand what we're dealing with right now around
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the explosion of x fo O two and what it
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: means for payment tech AI agents, how all this applies.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Give us a rundown of what this is in simple terms.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so X four two is an open standard for
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Internet native payments, and so X four two really is
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: the most boring piece of tech you will probably ever encounter.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: But I think people don't realize that the Internet is
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: entirely based on these standards that everyone agrees upon to
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: use HTMLHDP, CSS, JavaScript, These aren't controversial. There actually isn't
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: a standard for payments that everyone just agrees is the
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: one you should use. And so what x RO two
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: is is like an open, neutral standard for communicating between
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: two computers how to perform a payment. But what it
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: unlocks is what's so exciting about it. Because now if
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: you can move money in the same way you move data,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: and everyone speaks the same language of how to move
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: that money, you get like these crazy unlocks of agents
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: being able to pay other agents, programmatic payments from different
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: computers to different computers, and that unlocks micro transactions and
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: all sorts of different use cases.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: This is kind of almost a residual of tim berners
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Lee in terms of the technology that you're talking about
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in terms of use case. Is it only been unlocked
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: because of the fact that we have digital money now
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: in the format of something like a stable coin.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually exactly right. So X four oh two
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: is a nod to the four H two status code,
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: which was enshrined in I believe it was nineteen ninety
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: seven under the HDP one point one spec And I'll read,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you the entire spec of the four H
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: two status code. Four H two. The entire spec of
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: it is payment required. Four H two is reserved for
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: future use, and there's been a lot of people. That's it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: That's the entirety of the spec There's nothing else, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: so there's a lot of people who have tried this
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: over the years. Market Jurason spent a non trivial amount
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: of time trying to get payments to work on the
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Internet in the nineties, back in the Mosaic days, back
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: in the Netscape days. Brian Armstrong tried to get payments
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: to work with bitcoin native to the Internet in twenty fifteen.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Bology Shunivasen tried at twenty sixteen. There is definitely not
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: a new idea, But I think the reason as to
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: why now is one, the technology has gotten way better
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: and you now have stable coins and the mechanisms of
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: payment that are like better, faster, cheaper, subtle, instantly, And
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: then I think even that may not be enough of
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: an incumbent for us. The second one is that you
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: now need programmatic payments because we have AI entering the
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: ecosystem and being a new economic actor on the Internet.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think what's interesting about this is it's
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: all converging at the same time, and it's what's also
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: somewhat eloquent is it's using technology from the nineteen nineties
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to be able to execute on what could be the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: next generation of technology around AI. I'm just looking at
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: X four h two X scan and this was kind
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: of the explosion that occurred right there. Coinbased, of course,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: leading the way we were trying to get the payai
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: guys on. But that's a good explanation on it. But
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: why did we see the explosion over the last couple
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of days. What was the catalyst that caused this?
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: I think really the catalyst was Twitter noticed, and it
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: just it became front and center of everybody's mind very
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: quickly that oh, X four h two is a thing,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: and then it's extremely easy to adopt. X four two
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: is a standard. You spend a lot of effort making
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: it so it can you can accept payments with X
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: four two in less than twenty minutes. You ended up
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: seeing a huge explosion both in transaction volume for a
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: bunch of different use cases, some crypto related, some not
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: crypto related. And then I think the number of servers
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: that you can pay I think at almost one hundred
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: X at least at least twenty five X that have
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: to go look at the stats and the number of
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: sellers more than one hundred x and so you kind
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: of had this moment of a big, huge amount of
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: attention and crypto Twitter kind of discovering it, and then
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: people actually taking the time to think, oh, maybe I
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: should build something on this, and then a bunch of
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: new use cases popping up.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at diagram coming over from X.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: This is kind of the interesting point right there, before
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: taking a online payment and how it works with an
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: AI agent versus what this would do for it. Talk
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: to me about that, because this starts to change the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: very nature of how payments can be done, especially when
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: we're talking about AI agents being involved. This changes everything
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: for companies like Visa master, anybody that's doing online payments
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: right now, which has been using old technologies as thirty
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: years old. How does this help the modern day financial
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: system as it is today? The day has to just
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: adopt this, and they're you know, they're immediately caught up
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to where we are now.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: I think one of the things that makes X four
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: two really powerful is that it's not coupled to the
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: underlying payment network, and so you know, quin basically think
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: stable coins are the best way to move money, but
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: there's nothing that would stop Visa MasterCard, or you know,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: any payment mechanism even ach from being expressible and usable
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: via X four O two. The amount that you can
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: pay may be different, the like limits may be different.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: But as a all X four two is a is
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: a way of expressing how a payment should be conducted,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: and you could you could easily say that payment could
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: be conducted on the Visa network or any other payment
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: network in the world.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, and what.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: State, And then you marry x roy two with stable
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: coins and you get subscent transactions, and you get these
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: micro payments, and you get all these payments that suttle
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: in real time. But X row two you can easily
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: imagine a situation where you have an AI agent that
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: is paying like one cent per request to do better
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: research for you, to like research where you want to
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: go on vacation, and then you do like a last
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: mile larger purchase using a credit card to buy the
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: actual plane ticket.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting because obviously that's kind of the new
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: granular method of how AI agents can really execute in
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: terms of drawing in data. We're starting to see it
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: now on token based systems around AI, especially as we
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: see a lot of these lms kind of explode in
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: terms of their just the narrative of what they have
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to look for in terms of the syllabus. When you
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: look at this statement right here, This came in from
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: A sixteen Z. This was an interesting component where he
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: said crypto may be the only viable payment rail for
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: AI agents and showing x.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: RO two as a possibility.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: First of all, is that do you think that is
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: going to be the case for AI agents or do
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you think there might be other technology that could eventually
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: adapt to the speed and the demand for AI.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: I think, as of today, stable coins on modern blockchains
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: are the fastest, cheapest, quickest to settle payment mechanism that
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: exists on the planet. In the future, maybe these payment
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: networks adapt their technology or transpiration from blockchains and kind
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: of modernize and reduce things like fees and so on.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: But right now I think I agree with that statement. Yeah,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: I think that stable coins are the best way for
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: AA agents to transact.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's moving quickly, Eric, when you look at
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: what this could potentially unlock, you know, as far as industries, obviously,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: we saw the coinbased partnership with City here recently, just yesterday,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: there's a lot converging on the finance side of it.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But could this also unlock other areas of digital use
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: cases out there?
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: I definitely think so. If you think about it, you've
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: probably never made a purchase on the Internet that's been
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: under a dollar. Yeah, because one, there's a lot of friction.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: You have to enter a credit card and you need
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: to it's just a bad ux. But to the these
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: networks haven't really been designed for those low dollar values.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: And so you can imagine a world where instead of
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: needing to pay for subscriptions, you can just pay for
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: the content that you or your agents are actually accessing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: And you could pay it ten cents, or you could
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: pay one cent, you could pay a dollar. And we've
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: already seen a product that Coinbas shipped a couple of
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: weeks ago that flew under the radar is something that
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: we call payment MCP and what it does it gives
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Claude or any MCP compatible AI as a stable coin
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: wallet and now it can make autonomous purchases on your behalf.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: And what we've seen is you can use that to
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: compose to get more out of these AI agents because
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: now they can access more data, more context, and perform
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: more tasks than they were able to before.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the MCP wallet right there, just showing Anthropics
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Claude integrating it. So this is integrated now. And you said,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: this only takes about twenty minutes for somebody to roll
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: this out, which is an example of kind of the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: explosion that we saw in terms of merchants that have
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: already jumped on this. What would be the big area
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that you think would be a huge uptick on this?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Would it be gaming? Could it be e commerce? Where
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: do you think the growth will be?
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I think the growth is going to be in areas
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: that we don't even see coming because the Internet is
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: really not composable right now. Yeah, everything kind of exists
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: in these silos, and AI has the potential to make
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: it so you can combine multiple sources of data, multiple
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: services into singular workflows in a much more, much more
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: robust way than has previously be impossible. And so I'll
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: give you some concrete ones. It's like you can imagine
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: your AI agent going out and paying for a bunch
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: of data on a site like LinkedIn and giving you
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: paying a dollar or something to access a bunch of
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: profiles of candidates, and then going and searching the web
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: for all of their web presence and then giving you
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: an analysis based on their social media and their web
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: presence of do they think this candidate is going to
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: be a good culture fit. And that's like a novel
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: use case that you can just kind of do because oh, now,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: if you can pay to access that data, you can
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: compose it with other capabilities these ais have.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And also I think you look at the potential here
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: around subscription models that are existing in the media space
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: right now, because that is a I would say it's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a huge barrier right now in terms of content. I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: know a lot of the publishers talk about this bit.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I go to publisher conferences all the time, and they're
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: always getting in on, you know, how much they're going
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to embrace AI.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: The problem that's always brought up is micro.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Payments of being able to just say, okay, they only
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: want a few stories out of my website, but I
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: only have you know, a monthly or an annual program.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So being able to do this now would be pretty
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: significant around this. What about the server growth expectations? Does
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: this change.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Anything right now? I'm just looking at the marketplace.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Active merchants have exploded new registrations are moving fourteen thousand
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: new merchants. What is this going to look like in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: just in a few months.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think if we can keep writing this,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: you'll we cross a million dollars in volume two days ago,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: and then I believe it, day later, we crossed two
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: million dollars and so okay, if the trend continues, and
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: I hope it does, like we'll probably be seeing a
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: billion dollars of commerce through X four h two per
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: week in six months.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: So this is exponential.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a major onlock for how quickly
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: do you think retailers, finance, media companies, banks will will
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: pick this up?
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: I think traditional companies can take a while. And companies
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: are starting to get more and more comfortable with stable coins. Yeah,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: and so I think that I think progress is only
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: going to continue to accelerate. Will there be a dip
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: at some point of course? Right, like the these things
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: always kind of have a bit of a trend, and
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: you know that X four two is really there's a
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: lot of attention and excitement about it right now, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: inevitably people are going to it's going to become mundane
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: and then we'll see, like the real utility as more
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: and more people come online. You might have caught about
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: a month. A month ago, we announced that we're moving
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: X four two into a foundation, and cloud Flair and
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: coinbase will be the two first members of the foundation.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: An example of that is cloud flair is going to
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: be using X four two to enable pay per crawl
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: there on any website hosted on claud flair, which is okay,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: twenty percent of the Internet, and so now if you
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: host your content on cloud flair, you can pretty easily
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: enable paper crawl and accept payment VX for it too,
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: which will.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that would translate to a lot of
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the hosting platforms that are hosting for I think Squarespace
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: is on cloud Flare, which is an example of e
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: commerce platforms that could launch forward pretty quickly. They're doing
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: payments now, if they got into micropayments, this would be
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: interesting for Squarespace, I think to maybe roll something out
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: like this, and they're already touching I think, what is
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it a few hundred thousand sites a week in terms
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of growth, so huge opportunity in terms of where this
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: might go around paywall and subscriptions. Let's talk about the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: UX because this is another area that I see as
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: kind of an inhibitor. Right now, at least on Web three,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: most of the time it's been wallets. You've got these
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: pop ups, you know, this Web three integration, which has
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: been very clunky. It's very clunky. Does any of that
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: change with this kind of integration.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: I think wallet experiences for humans are getting better and
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: better every day, and wallet experiences for agents are significantly
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: better than the alternative. Yeah, because there isn't really a
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: viable alternative, and so giving an agent that you code
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: a wallet is actually very easy. You just say, hey,
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: here's you integrate any number of open source SDKs, you
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: could use CDPs products. It actually is pretty easy to
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: give your agent a wallet. But at CDP we try
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: to make that easier and easier every day, and make
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: funding that wallet easier and easier, and giving your agent
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: controls and making it safe for your agent to transact
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: on your behalf using their wallet easier and easier.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at this layout right here where this particular
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: individual built an AI agent to compete in real time
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: on auctions. This is reference to NS domains right there,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: so if they're in name service. But that's kind of interesting.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That this is interactive. Now, imagine where this could go
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: around an opportunity like this and back to your point
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: getting agent agent commerce, because this is a topic we've
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: covered quite deep on the show. Here is there's an opportunity.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Now it seems like this could be a framework to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: help all this become reality.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: What could this unlock when.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You have kind of this whole AI agent bidding process,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: what do you think it can unlock?
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: I think it unlocks money moving the same way data
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: moves on the internet, where there's no friction, money moves
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: trivially and freely, and you can make payment really naturally,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: and you just it's much more budget based and much
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: more kind of you don't need all these pop ups
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: and confirms. You just start giving value to the places
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: that you're receiving value from.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: In line, do you think, Eric, we're what three years
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: five years away?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Companies?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Because the traditional banking system is pretty much the gatekeeper
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: right now of all money moving online, especially when it
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: comes to e commerce. The fees, the merchant fees, the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: speed problems. Don't even get into cross border settlement. I'm
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: just talking about dealing with you know, paying for something online,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: your Netflix bill, so all of that starts to change dramatically.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Is it a three year five year runway or do
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you think it could happen faster with the fact that
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: we've got so much AI coming online.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I think that AI has just moved faster than everyone
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: has projected and predicted. Everything has been faster, and so
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: it could be six months, it could be two years.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: But I wouldn't be surprised if if there was like
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: multiple billions of dollars, multiple billions of dollars of agentic
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: transactions happening next year. I think Mark, I think A
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: sixteen Z and the recent state of crypto projected a
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I believe it was a thirty trillion dollar payment market
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: for agentic commerce by twenty thirty, and so that would
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: imply like an incredible rate of growth between now and
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: five years from now.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess the question is could the missing
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: piece be gaming. We were looking at pay AI's team
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: kind of what they're doing in terms of unlocking this
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: using X four O two and being able to get
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: into what is somewhat micropayments, real time settlement, et cetera.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Do you think that would be the potential gateway for
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: all of this to maybe take off as the payment ecosystems,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I mean the gaming ecosystems.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: I think gaming is like a really natural fit because
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: it has so many micro transactions, like so many games,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: you're buying loot boxes or skins or other things for
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: the game, and each one of those is really just
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: a micro transaction, and right now they need to represent
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: it as like credits or you know, in game gems
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: or something like that, because you can't actually just perform
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: a small payment. And so I think that that definitely
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: for consumers is like one potential avenue reis. I think
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: it's going to be utility and composability of different services
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: and data and so on in order to give AI superpowers.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is something that is starting to I
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: think catch a lot of people by surprise in terms
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of how quickly AI, especially on the Augentic side, because
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: we've talked about it for I think better part of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a year now now we're actually seeing it. Use case,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the ecosystem market map right here, I'm
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: looking at chains and protocols. Obvious do you think we'll
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: see first of all, which blockchains do you see benefiting
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: most from X four oh two?
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Right now?
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I think all blockchains that lean into X four two
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: will see benefit because each blockchain kind of has their
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: own ecosystem. And one of the one of the designed
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: decisions that I made very early with X four two
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: is it's not as zero sum game. You as a
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: server can accept payments on multiple chains at once, and
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: you can say, hey, it's not just Base. You can
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: choose Base and Solana and Polygon and as many as
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: you care to receive funds on. And so I think
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: anywhere that has distribution and has people using their blockchain
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: benefits from adopting X ro two.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the key here is going to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: be watching these consumer apps because you guys will see this.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, you probably won't recognize one of these consumer
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: apps right here, but this is a good example of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the kind of explosion that we could see around what
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you're talking about as some of these additional services out
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: there that really make this a much more composable component.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Tying into wallets.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: We see you know, Visa tap in their stripe, ACP
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Payai guys which we've talked about crossments in their circle. Obviously,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: how fast could that grow in terms of wallets and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: payments and integrations into x orld two.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you're going to hit thirty trillion in
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: five years to really yeah, you're going to need everybody. Right,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: it's a massively grown py rate, and it's I think
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: right now, all about proving at use cases, all about
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: finding novel ways to use this technology. And it's I
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: think everyone has to be clear at in that it's
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: we're not going to be able to predict every way
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: that this is used. If you think back to the
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: founding of the Internet exactly, I doubt that Tim berners
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Lead imagined Uber being created, right.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: It's it's likely not whenever.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: You have a new technology, it's it's the market and
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: there the builders are going to determine how it's used.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: And I can give you a list of things, but
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: really I'm just excited to see what people do with it.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: It's going to be intriguing and if it does take off,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: especially on the Bell curve that we saw in the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: early stages of the Internet really taking off, because use
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: case was really what generated a lot of that Bell
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: curve in.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Terms of growth.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: The other thing that is hidden in plain sight is
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the fact that this is correlated to money, and if
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you look at just the stable coin data right here.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, look at that, guys. This is the stable
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: coin movement that we're seeing right now, and this is
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: just getting started. So you unlock micro transactions, you unlock
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: major transactions, cross border payments, you've pretty much put everything
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: within this ecosystem. And as you know, Tom Lee talks
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: about this all the time. Follow the money, which is
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: mostly sitting right there in ERC twenty, which of course
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: is u SEC, Teather and some others. But this could
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: get big pretty quickly. Do you think this is going
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to possibly super charge stable coin adoption even more so
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: in the short term?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: I think that's I think that's very likely. Stable Coins
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: are really the only form of payment where you can
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: charge a tenth of a cent or a billion dollars
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and it's the same thing that happens, and that that
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: really is like a superpower. And there's no fees right
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: There's you just pay the gas. There's not some percentage
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: based fee that you need to cover in order to
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: move the money. And that is I think a unique
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: property that makes stable coin like really well suited for
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: these kind of payments.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Man, Eric, we're gonna we're gonna be keeping a close
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: eye on this because I anticipate we're going to see
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of new products, a lot of new developments,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: even within the products that we've already seen a blockchain
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: take off. So it's good having you on. Next time,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: we got to get you and Dan on because I
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: want to hear kind of the biz dev side of this.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: What's it going to look like, you know, in six months,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: a year to where X four two could go. But
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: thanks for coming in today. We appreciate it.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Paul.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You bet all right, You guys, make sure and jump
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: in over on our own group. We'll keep you updated
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: on things like this, and the way you do that
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: is click the link down below, and of course follow
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: me out there on x Appaul Baron. We'll catch you
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: next time right here on The Paul Baron Show.