Why did ‘AI coins’ surge on a single remark from Jensen Huang?… Spotlight on the ‘X402 Protocol’ [Hwang Doo-hyun’s Web3+]

Related coins jump after Jensen Huang mentions ‘AI agents’

Expectations for wider autonomous payments… spotlight on crypto’s role

‘X402 Protocol’ emerges as AI payment infrastructure

Google, AWS, Visa join… battle for leadership heats up

When Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, made remarks highlighting the coming era of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, related virtual assets (cryptocurrencies) surged across the board.

In a keynote speech at Nvidia’s annual event ‘GTC 2026’ on the 16th, Huang said, “AI is evolving beyond simple chatbots to a stage where it performs real business tasks,” projecting broader adoption of AI agents. In response, major AI-agent-related coins such as Fetch (32%), NEAR (12.6%) and World (11.7%) posted double-digit gains.

AI agents refer to autonomous AI systems that can make decisions and carry out tasks on their own without user intervention, extending to economic activities such as using services and purchasing data. In particular, the AI-agent-based payments market is forecast to grow to as much as $5 trillion by 2030. Against this backdrop, blockchain is emerging as the infrastructure to support AI-agent payments, due to the physical limitations of existing financial networks.

In practice, if AI agents repeatedly make continuous micro-payments in 1-won increments during data lookups or API calls, legacy financial rails—with high fees and slow processing—struggle to handle them efficiently. The technology designed to fill this structural gap and complete AI’s autonomous economic activity is ‘X402,’ a protocol that combines blockchain with AI agents.

‘2-second payments’ without logging in… ‘X402’ brings blockchain to AI

X402, jointly developed by Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, and web infrastructure company Cloudflare, is a blockchain-based autonomous payment protocol designed to allow AI agents to pay and settle costs in crypto on their own without human involvement.

The name is derived from the HTTP status code ‘402 (Payment Required).’ It reflects the idea of implementing, via blockchain, the ‘web-native payment function’ that remained only a concept in the early design of the internet.

X402’s biggest feature is autonomy that eliminates human intervention. It is designed so AI agents can execute payments directly without signing up for an account or logging in. When an AI receives a ‘402’ response while accessing paid data, it completes payment in stablecoins in about two seconds. In fact, AI agents have executed about 140 million payments over the past nine months, with 98.6% settled in the stablecoin ‘USDC.’

This approach significantly improves structural inefficiencies in legacy payment systems. Traditional financial networks require multi-step processes—login, card authentication, payment authorization—making them ill-suited to AI that must repeat micro-payments 24/7. Transfer delays due to holidays and friction caused by cross-country currency differences have also been cited as structural issues.

There is also a clear difference in cost efficiency. Traditional payment rails such as Stripe are seen as unsuitable for micro-payments because they incur a minimum fee of about $0.5 per transaction. By contrast, X402 enables payments at about $0.015 on Coinbase’s ‘Base’ network and about $0.003 on the Solana network. This makes it possible to pay per individual data item without paying expensive subscription fees upfront or going through complex know-your-customer (KYC) checks.

Google, AWS, Visa join… global race to secure infrastructure intensifies

Global big tech and traditional financial firms are moving to integrate with the X402 protocol. Rather than spending heavily to build proprietary AI payment networks, companies are opting to adopt an open standard that already addresses fee and speed issues, a strategy aimed at capturing the market early.

Google is integrating the X402 protocol into its in-house AI agent payment standard, the ‘Agent Payments Protocol (AP2),’ enabling AI to pay directly in stablecoins within Google Cloud environments. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also combining X402 with its AI infrastructure ‘Bedrock,’ calling it “a technology that can close the payment gap that has hindered the adoption of AI in the financial sector.”

Stablecoin issuer Circle unveiled a nano-payments testnet based on the X402 protocol, moving to build micro-payment infrastructure. It focuses on processing transactions between AI agents by supporting payments in units smaller than a cent ($0.01).

Traditional finance is also responding quickly. Visa released a ‘Trust Agent Protocol’ to support communications between AI agents and merchants and is reviewing integration with X402.

Still, challenges remain for the AI payments market to take hold. The KYC steps that X402 omits to improve payment efficiency make it harder to trace illicit transactions such as money laundering (AML). Analysts say it is necessary to clarify legal liability and establish institutional guidelines.

Real-world acceptance by merchants and consumers is also uncertain. Chris Donat, head of research at BWG Global, said, “Without strong demand from consumers, there is no reason for merchants to proactively adopt a new payment method,” adding, “Given that crypto is not yet a mainstream means of payment, the rosy growth outlook for the AI payments market is a somewhat aggressive figure.”