Agentic Economy

Today a person compares prices, picks a seller and types in a card number. In an agentic economy, you might tell an agent “keep the office stocked with coffee under $200 a month” and it would find suppliers, compare offers and pay, possibly by dealing with other companies’ agents. The term describes a direction people expect the market to move in, not a finished system.

The hard problems are trust and payments: how a merchant knows an agent is allowed to spend your money, and how you limit what it can do. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), announced in 2025, is one industry attempt; it uses cryptographically signed “mandates” as verifiable proof of what the user instructed. Rules that bound an agent’s spending are covered under agent policy engine.

In episode 65 at 24:37, Conor says most people on the show are convinced we are heading into an agentic economy and that it will need faster, more efficient payment rails. Ledger’s Charles Guillemet goes further: at 2:28 he argues the agentic economy will run on blockchain rails because they are faster and cheaper, and at 29:59 he says an agent “doesn’t care at all about the UX” that makes people reluctant to use crypto. Those are forecasts from a crypto hardware company’s CTO and the host, not settled facts.