What happens when AI becomes the primary economic actor?
In this conversation, Sean Neville (cofounder of Circle, architect of USDC, and now cofounder of Catena Labs) shares his vision for the next phase of the internet: an agent-native economy powered by programmable dollars and AI banks.
As stablecoins put dollars on internet rails, a new question emerges: what happens when AI agents start earning, spending, lending, investing — and even managing our assets — on our behalf?
From KYA (“Know Your Agent”) to programmable spending policies to secure agent communication standards, this conversation explores the foundational layers that must be built before AI can safely participate in the global economy.
Sean breaks down:
- Why he believes AI agents could become the dominant economic participants
- What an “AI-native bank” actually is (and why we’ll need one)
- The missing infrastructure required for safe agent-to-agent payments
- How cryptography can encode trust directly into software
- Why current financial risk systems are designed to block bots — and what needs to change
- The fragmented race to define standards for agent identity, payments, and communication-
- Lessons from building Circle and launching USDC
- Why he doesn’t love the term “stablecoin”
Follow a16z crypto for more...
X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto
📩 Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/
***
As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
