- World Liberty Financial is building stablecoin rails for AI agents, co-founder teases.
- Stablecoins are growing rapidly, with the market approaching $315 billion, according to data from DefiLlama.
- Circle, Stripe, Coinbase, and Shopify are all developing infrastructure for AI-driven commerce.
The Trump family’s crypto startup is rewiring the way machines pay.
World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Folkman teased on Wednesday that the stablecoin issuer is preparing for a massive push into agent-powered payments powered by artificial intelligence.
This positions its USD1 stablecoin for a future where autonomous software agents conduct transactions at machine speed.
“We’ve been building in the background,” Folkman said.
“There are some very exciting updates coming that will completely change the way people think about AI agents autonomously making payments,” he said.
Other developers of the project confirmed that World Liberty Financial is “already developing an AI agent capable of autonomous payments.”
World Liberty Financial’s new focus on AI and cryptocurrency crossover comes amid a broader rush to build out the infrastructure for AI-driven online commerce using stablecoins.
U.S. President Donald Trump, honorary co-founder of World Liberty Financial, has repeatedly championed stablecoin innovation as part of his vision to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.”
stablecoins expand
According to data from DefiLlama, the stablecoin market has grown to nearly $315 billion. This is twice the market size in 2022. USD1 is the fifth largest stablecoin in the world.
In November, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised his forecast for global stablecoin adoption to $3 trillion by 2030, an increase of about 50% from his previous forecast of $2 trillion.
Citi analysts are even more bullish, predicting that the stablecoin market could grow to $4 trillion by the end of this decade.
Agent revolution?
World Liberty Financial’s proxy payments push marks an attempt to anchor USD1 at the center of machine-to-machine trading, which industry pioneers increasingly describe as the digital dollar’s next growth engine.
Analysts behind a widely circulated Citrini Research report have warned that agent payments could lead to global economic collapse, while industry advocates are pushing to make the technology a reality.
In a recent earnings call, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire positioned stablecoins as the native currency of machine commerce.
“We are building a new Internet financial system,” he said, arguing that the real opportunity lies not in agents buying consumer goods, but in agents consuming each other’s services.
Circle has rolled out new blockchain infrastructure and nanopayments capabilities designed to allow agents to hold balances and transact in fractions of a penny. Meanwhile, Stripe is working with cryptocurrency partners to develop Tempo, a blockchain dedicated to stablecoin payments.
E-commerce platform Shopify has integrated stablecoin payments and cashback incentives. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has developed x402, an open standard truly intended for agent payments. Venture capital is flowing into agent-led platforms.
But adoption is still in its early stages. x402 has only tens of thousands of users and modest monthly transaction volume in a global e-commerce market in the trillions.
The power of AI
Still, the tech giant continues its relentless quest for AI platforms.
On Tuesday, Meta acquired Moltbook, a viral social network built specifically for AI agents, and welcomed its founder to its superintelligence lab. Axios Reported.
Moltbook has created a verified registry for agents tied to human owners, allowing them to coordinate and transact on behalf of users.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has hired the creator of OpenClaw, an autonomous agent framework.
Ecosystems are converging around identity, coordination, and programmable payments, the necessary rails for software to operate economically.
In this model, an AI legal representative charges another representative for a research fee. Logistics agents pay data providers for real-time shipment updates. Analytics bots buy compute cycles by the minute. These flows are frequent, low-value, and automated. They prefer programmable money built directly into their workflow.
Lance Datukoruo is DL News’ Europe-based market correspondent. Any tips? send him an email lance@dlnews.com.
