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Li Jin
@li
I don't understand the reasoning behind "AI agents will need to transact via crypto" - why? I've seen AI agents where users just auth with their own traditional payment credentials to interact with websites. Why crypto? (trying to engage in a good faith discussion)
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Aleph 🎩 ↑
@aleph
I think the best argument for this is a lot more automation/programmability: If AI wanted to round trip a currency trade, it’s too hard to do in trad fi: needs to login to BoA, send to fidelity, use fidelity API to do trade etc. The moment anyone in that chain has a closed system or no API, difficulty spikes.
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Li Jin
@li
How does giving the agent a crypto wallet solve the lack of API problem?
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Aleph 🎩 ↑
@aleph
Everything onchain is “programmable” by the AI Eg if the AI needed to hire someone to do a task, it would just use bountycaster and pay with crypto (can use uniswap to change to a specific currency if needed). Much easier than spinning up a task rabbit account, potentially doing some Kyc, adding card details. Worse if you had to pay a hire in say Argentina. Another consideration would be better/more granular permissions eg “Siri AI is allowed to only spend $100 on a Nike website”; can do very well with smart wallets; harder with traditional cards (this example is actually possible in corporate finance but not really in personal finance)
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Li Jin
@li
In the latter example - Nike accepts traditional payment methods, not crypto. If I were building an ecomm agent, I would sooner allow users to auth their credit cards than to support crypto payments?
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Aleph 🎩 ↑
@aleph
Yeah, but you don’t always have control over the payment method you can enable. You likely depend on Stripe which itself has a dependency on Visa/Mastercard. A big crypto argument has been that the card giants won’t become more flexible and open. Besides this, Stripe wants to prevent fraud and might “accidentally ban User AI” a lot. Even if there was a way you could allow users auth their credit cards, it’s still a relatively unpredictable system: text OTP, 3DS, Stripe fraud checks etc. As a card owner, I have no way of telling Stripe or Visa “approve all payments from my card even if it looks like fraud because my AI is doing some research for me and might need to spend a little bit of money erratically”.
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