Will Stablecoins Own Machine-To-Machine Payments? Ft. Christian Catalini

On Ep. 12 of Agentic Commerce, Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto @ Visa, and Bam Azizi, CEO & Founder @ Mesh are joined by Christian Catalini, Founder @ MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab to discuss machine-to-machine payments, why micropayments struggle, AI commoditization and more!

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 03:29 Why agentic commerce became the intersection of AI and crypto
• 06:53 Incumbents vs crypto rails in agentic commerce
• 09:48 Machine-to-machine payments, information markets, and agent liability
• 13:39 Why micropayments struggle and new agent-focused markets may emerge
• 18:51 The intent economy, agent efficiency, trust, and verification
• 20:45 Stablecoins, tokenized deposits, cross-border payments, and treasury operations
• 24:07 Measurable work automation and human verification as the bottleneck
• 27:59 AI commoditization, routing, proprietary data, and sustainable competitive moats
• 33:34 Incumbent data advantages versus startup talent and open weights
• 36:10 How fintech firms can build and control domain-specific AI

Tokenized is sponsored by Visa
A world leader in digital payments, Visa is bridging the gap between traditional financial institutions and innovative blockchain networks, helping players in the payments ecosystem navigate the ever-evolving world of tokenized fiat currencies with confidence and ease. Learn more at visa.com/crypto.

Tokenized is also presented by Mesh
As the first global crypto payments network, Mesh makes it possible for anyone — or any agent — to pay or get paid instantly, from any wallet, on any chain, anywhere in the world. Learn more at meshpay.com

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We’d also like to remind you that the views or opinions of our contributors today are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the companies they are representing. Nothing we say should be taken as tax, financial, investment or legal advice, do your own research!

Music by Henry McLean