Inside @Stripe's MPP IRL: machine payments, stablecoins, and the future of agent commerce. Agents are starting to pay for things on their own: API calls, services, each other. Nobody's agreed on how that should work. This panel was three takes on it. @BackseatVC (Stripe) leads product for Machine Payments — the open standard for how agents pay for things. @dwr (@tempo) is building stablecoin payment rails, and thinks that's what agent commerce runs on, not cards. @blauyourmind (Royal) magician turned @a16z Crypto partner turned CTO is exploring programmable money for creators, and why the demand side is barely here yet. We got into: • Why HTTP 402, a status code from the early web, is suddenly the backbone of agent payments • Why Dan thinks a credit card is a private key and why stablecoins are safer for agents • Where stablecoins actually win first • Whether you should build for agent payments now or wait • Why the demand side is "virtually nonexistent" and what that means if you're building 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Event Kickoff JEN LEE — Product Lead, Stripe (00:44) What the Machine Payments Protocol Is (01:28) How MPP Works — the HTTP 402 Payment Challenge (03:25) Adoption So Far: ~30,000 Transactions (04:04) Building Trust — Shared Tokens & the Link Agent Wallet (05:56) What the Creator Economy Looks Like When the Audience Is Agents (07:15) What She Was Certain About at 22 That's Now Wrong DAN ROMERO — GTM, Tempo (08:34) Meet Dan (08:49) Why Stablecoins, and the Genius Act Tailwind (09:48) "A Credit Card Is Basically a Private Key" (11:19) Should Every Company Be Thinking About MPP? (13:03) What to Be Wary Of (15:15) Where Stablecoins Win — Payouts, Remittances, DoorDash MICHAEL BLAU — CTO, Royal (16:36) Meet Michael (17:13) From Magician to a16z Crypto to CTO (17:57) Team Over Idea — His a16z Takeaway (18:26) "The Demand Side Is Virtually Nonexistent" (19:03) Closing