Below are guest posts and opinions from Bobby Shell, Vice President of Voltage’s Board of Directors and Marketing.
AI is no longer just supporting humans, it can also make decisions, manage resources, and even spend money. But this new digital workforce runs on outdated infrastructure without any immediate programmable payment rails. Today’s AI systems have evolved into autonomous agents that can handle complex workflows independently. These agents can plan, interpret, decide and execute operations, become increasingly trusted and economic decisions.
However, for these AI systems to truly scale and thrive, they need immediate, scalable, secure access to digital money: Bitcoin.
Here are the reasons why the right infrastructure stack is important, how it is already formed, and why market leaders should act now:
A legacy network is being built. Is it scalable?
Today’s financial infrastructure is built on a closed system. Centralized platforms such as Visa and Mastercard dominate payment processing, gatekeeping access to tools and protocols. Visa experiments using AI-powered payment orchestration and MasterCard develop dynamic transaction frameworks, but these solutions are designed for existing people rather than innovators.
They exclude people who are silent, adapt slowly, and rely on decentralized assets like Bitcoin. These systems never serve the edge of innovation where creators, startups and AI native businesses are building their futures.
This is where open rails appear as a destructive alternative.
There are several steps in the AI Ready Payment Stack.
This starts with Stablecoins, a predictable and permitted currency for digital work that allows global teams and AI agents to trade seamlessly, whether they split revenues between algorithms or pay content creators across borders. Lightning works beyond the constraints of Visa/MasterCard and is instantly gathering at a cost of nearly zero. If an AI agent negotiates contracts or autonomous drone order replacement parts, it should not require a human to approve the transaction. First, open rails allow you to pay machines: stubcoins become the “pay” of algorithmic work, while lightning acts as a pure payroll system. This is not just a technical upgrade, it’s the release of automation from human bottlenecks.
This stack redefines AI commerce: machines trade autonomously, humans cooperate seamlessly, no banks, no friction.
AI agents are becoming financial stakeholders
Today’s AI models can do much more than a year ago when workplace penetration is increasing. You can perform project management tasks and deploy file accounting records, ordering supplies, and even code. These systems do not merely direct them. They can act autonomously.
Modern platforms such as Openai’s GPT and Langchain framework allow AI systems to build “agent loops” or workflows where they interact autonomously with external tools, APIs, and services. These agents often call external services and require payment for each action. For example, an AI Writing Assistant may obtain grammar checks from third-party services. Alternatively, the Travel Planning Bot may book a car rental.
AI operations demand automated, accurate, immediate payments. Traditional billing halted by manual delays, high fee-per-use models, frontal commitments, and unprogrammable Fiat Rails relying on middle schools.
Stablecoins is the currency of digital work
In 2024, Stablecoin volume exceeded $27.6 trillion, comparable or surpassing major credit card networks.
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Stablecoins bypass cryptocurrency volatility, resolve transactions instantly without delay, allowing seamless program issuance, spending and auditing.
When AI accesses capital, especially in the form of permitted payments, it finds the best solution in the shortest time and lowest cost. This pay-per-action model reduces overhead, minimizes waste, and gives open system AI agents a competitive advantage.
result? Fastest decisions, transparent spending, and measurable results are what businesses want for every operational group.
Bitcoin: Basic Layer
Today, most Stablecoins operate on platforms such as Ethereum and Solana. However, Bitcoin remains the safest and most widely trusted blockchain, with the Lightning Network fulfilling its original promise as a “payment scaling layer.”
And what’s exciting is that there are already common use cases where AI agents use the Bitcoin Lightning network for payments. It is driven primarily by the integration of AI with tools like Lightning Network’s L402 protocol and Langchain, as pioneered by Lightning Labs.
Using the L402 protocol, AI agents can query specialized AI for market analytical data and pay small fees in Satoshis or Stablecoins via lightning. The L402 protocol authenticates and calculates these payments to ensure secure and instant transactions.
It can also be used to help people with the spam they are trying to solve since Adam Back’s Hashcash in 1997. The server hosting the AI model could theoretically issue an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response, prompting the AI to pay via lightning.
These use cases are still in the early stages, but show great potential as AI and Bitcoin converge.
Visa and MasterCard have built payment networks powered by AI, but have allowed systems still closed. By contrast, Lightning is live, open and proven. It is used by some of the largest names in the industry.
The obstacles to overcome
The liquidity model of Lightning networks that requires prefunding can pose potential challenges to adopt AI-driven payments as the main railway, especially in large numbers of autonomous systems. If the lightning channel is not sufficiently liquid, payments beyond the channel’s balance can result in complex routing failures through multiple nodes or requiring complex routing. Even small liquidity gaps can force payments to take complex routes to fit multiple nodes, increasing fees and delays.
To send payments autonomously, AI agents must raise sufficiently liquid lightning channels in advance. This requires advance capital (BTC or Stablecoins) and technical expertise to manage the channel. This is a barrier for small AI projects or projects without dedicated DevOps teams. Without a simple pool of ramps and fluidity, adoption could be stagnant.
This type of obstacle highlights the demand for businesses that provide services that bridge these gaps to ensure a smooth experience. Luckily, this is the industry’s death of passionate builders.
The future is programmable without permission
Ultimately, the rise of AI agents calls for a new kind of financial infrastructure that is open, scalable, secure, and unauthorized. In an AI-powered economy, speed, trust and programmers separate the winner from the laguard. Today, those who are open and based on instant payment rails aren’t just taking part in the future of money. They define it.
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