2025 is proving to be a critical year for crypto adoption. We used to have meme coins, but every token uploaded to Pump.fun risks diving to zero upon launch. The meme coin mania quickly moved to stablecoins, and from there, early supporters, including Coinbase which is behind USDC, are dipping into the green.
The big guys, including BlackRock, and politicians, including Donald Trump, are watching and stealthily invest billions. Plasma took off immediately, but the network is not suitable for AI payment agents; However, Coinbase has a plan.
The new global financial system is here. pic.twitter.com/pkpXia30FS
-Plasma (@Plasma) September 25, 2025
Realizing that a large portion of the world’s population is not crypto-savvy, Coinbase, through the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP), is reviving an old technology and building x402 on top of it. The main goal of x402 is to resolve “friction” in today’s digital economy, where payments in TradFi are slow and clunky, poorly suited to automation.
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What is x402?
Simply put, x402 is an open source payment protocol that reactivates the long-dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code in Web2. This code allows instant and automatic payments, ideal for AI agents.
It only takes a few lines of code, and x402 can be integrated into standard HTTP requests without the need for custom APIs, blockchain walletsor any other complex blockchain tool.
Coinbase said x402 is developed for the future “agent” of the Internet, where agents and AI machines will take over, enabling the automatic transfer of value in real time while being blockchain agnostic.
This feature means that x402 can be integrated into any chain, preferably low-cost platforms like BSC, Solana or Ethereum layer-2.
Erik Reppel, head of engineering at CDP, said the open source protocol could “define the next era of the Internet, a time where value flows as freely and instantly as information.” Reppel added that the CDP “lays the foundation for an economy run not just by people, but by software – autonomous, intelligent and always on.”
If payment is paramount, stablecoins fit x402 like a glove, enabling cheap payments anywhere in the world without requiring users to hold volatile native tokens.
What more? Since x402 will be preferable in low-cost scalable chains, the protocol will enable micro-transactions without the need for subscriptions.
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What is the implication? A boon for Ethereum and Stablecoins?
An X analyst said that if x402 took over, it would fundamentally change the “internet business model” that Web3 is based on.
He ppredicts a future wheree the open source protocol will cause a rapid change, allowing agents to take over and activatethe microphonetransactions that will be the “currency of the AI Internet”.
(Source: RyanSAdams,)
The good news is that since Coinbase is behind this protocol, Ethereum, which hosts DeFi primitives, will directly benefit from it once deployed for USDC microtransactions on base layer 2.
Already, over the last month, x402 has processed more than 38,000 transactions, an increase of 90%. What more? Trading volume increased by almost 5,000% during the same period to over $50,000.
(Source: x402 analysis)
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Coinbase CDP x402: an AI Stablecoin beast?
- Payments are still slow and not suitable for AI agents
- Stablecoins Are Rapidly Adopted
- x402 will enable automatic payments using AI and stablecoins
- x402 adoption will be massive for Ethereum
Article Coinbase Bets Big: Will This Public AI and Stablecoin Beast Ship Billions? appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
