Managing Chaos in Atoms and Markets: Michael Egorov on Physics, Liquidations, and Financial Engineering Shoal Signal Ep. 19 with @newmichwill, founder of @CurveFinance and @yieldbasis, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover how cooling atoms to 100 nanokelvins taught him to trust an invariant instead of a price, why he took impermanent loss on a trade on purpose, the half year he sat in liquidation on purpose to test Curve, and why nuclear fusion gets solved sooner than the field expects. 0:00 Photons look like giant cucumbers 0:58 What coherence time actually is 4:46 Bose-Einstein condensate and laser cooling 8:47 A qubit that held for seconds 11:36 From ideal atoms to ideal markets 13:50 The invariant is the only signal 15:08 Control systems in the lab and DeFi 16:42 Quantum finance and prices tunneling 18:49 A toy universe made of vortices 21:18 Why there is no antimatter around us 23:57 Crypto as the revolution in money 25:29 Cycles from Mt. Gox to meme coins 30:40 Where retail's next opportunity sits 33:36 The Web3 promise that never landed 35:28 Why crypto fits agents better than humans 39:09 Working only on impossible problems 40:00 Solving impermanent loss with Yield Basis 40:48 Reversible liquidation in Curve 42:26 Half a year in liquidation on purpose 45:42 Where the risk actually sits 49:45 Paying authors when AI trains on books 53:28 Energy as the next breakthrough 57:17 Two roads to fusion 1:03:33 Thorium and the economics of nuclear 1:08:13 Where the alpha is 1:10:21 Turning mercury into gold in San Francisco

Launching a Stablecoin Went From a $100M to a Dollar: Ben Milne on Stables & Agentic Commerce Shoal Signal Ep. 18 with @bpmilne, founder and CEO of @brale_xyz, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover why protocols are now a better tool for the job than a relational database, how a custom stablecoin cuts a payments company's costs and earns revenue at once, standing up a neobank on Brale's APIs in three hours, and why agent commerce will outnumber human commerce. 0:00 Why money moves to protocols 1:18 Intro and Ben's background 2:47 The card fees that led to Dwolla 4:16 Basis Theory and protecting data 5:26 The internet as the payment rail 6:54 Clearing and settlement on new protocols 8:40 Why payments companies love stablecoins 10:22 Where value accrues once barriers fall 13:28 What Brale actually does 14:34 Use cases from Coinflow to Rain 18:37 A neobank in three hours in Cursor 20:00 Millions of stablecoins and the liquidity divide 21:13 What makes a stablecoin high quality 25:08 Agent commerce outnumbers human commerce 27:00 Edge compute for money 29:57 What protocols mean for Visa 34:09 Gating an inbox with x402 38:14 Serving demand and rebuilding onboarding 40:17 Why Brale supports 27 chains 43:58 What a new builder should work on 47:03 Where the alpha is

Why we believe the data layer is one of the most valuable opportunities in robotics today, value will accrue to the businesses that can vertically integrate the entire data layer, and how @eastworlds_io is positioned to capture this emerging opportunity:

The $0.001 Payment No Human Would Ever Make: Ex-Stripe MPP Co-Author on Agent Payments and Tempo Shoal Signal Ep. 17 with @brendan_j_ryan, MPP co-author at @tempo, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover the checkout form agents will never load, why micropayments finally work once a CPU clicks OK, the Lisbon hotel week that produced MPP, why payments will never be unified, and the endgame where users pay over crypto rails without knowing it. 0:00 Checkout without the payment form 2:25 From Kubernetes to payments 4:37 Why payments will never be unified 11:25 No single payment method wins 15:16 Collapsing checkout into a protocol 18:12 Why pay-per-article finally works 20:47 Writing MPP in a Lisbon hotel 24:54 Hunting the killer use case 27:25 Turning rate limits into prices 29:50 Scrape once, serve a million times 35:05 Making 402 an official standard 40:48 Cloudflare and AWS flip the switch 42:32 Users never see the crypto rails 46:14 What finance looks like in five years 48:55 Two books on surfing entropy

As AI agents begin making decisions, accessing services, and initiating payments, the financial infrastructure behind them has to change too. A new report from @Shoalresearch explores why the agentic economy may need programmable money, policy-controlled wallets, service discovery, and always-on settlement. It also looks at how Circle’s broader platform, including USDC and Circle Agent Stack, fits that shift.

The $20K Card He Wouldn't Give an Agent: Allowance and Scoped Spend for AI Commerce Shoal Signal Ep. 15 with @dasmersingh, Founder & CEO at @useallowance (YC '26), hosted by @zaddycoin We cover the $20K card he wouldn't give an agent, which purchases go agentic first, why he builds on card rails not x402, and how a neutral wallet survives Visa and Stripe. 0:00 The $20K card an agent can't have 1:18 Intro and the agentic commerce case 2:21 His years at Cash App and Block 3:19 How parents actually feel safe 5:30 The OpenClaw moment and starting Allowance 9:13 Why agentic commerce wins 12:19 Developers buy first, consumers later 14:07 Clothes last, scarce tickets first 16:45 What Allowance actually is 19:53 Card rails vs new agent protocols 27:50 Handling websites that change 29:11 Staying defensible against Visa and Stripe 33:11 Will agents take jobs? 37:47 The missing piece: trust and coordination

Coinbase's x402: AI Agent Financial Independence, Agent Payments and Autonomy Shoal Signal with @MurrLincoln, AI Product Manager at @coinbase, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover x402 and machine payments, Coinbase for Agents, the facilitator layer, why 402 was the internet's missing error code, financial independence before agent autonomy, and where value accrues as agents become the internet's main users. 0:00 Intro and guest background 3:46 What x402 is and error code 402 5:36 The Coinbase stack, buyer and seller 6:43 Coinbase for agents and discovery 8:25 Where the real use cases are 13:47 Prediction markets and specialized agents 16:05 Agent to agent or machine to machine 20:15 Reuse existing rails or rebuild 23:43 Financial independence and the demand gap 27:16 Enterprise adoption of agentic commerce 30:44 Competing with cards and stablecoins 33:08 Other chains and where value accrues 36:12 x402 as a moonshot bet 38:30 Closing alpha and the autograph game

Where Does Value Accrue in the Agent Economy? Visa's Head of Crypto on stablecoins, x402/MPP, and card networks Shoal Signal with @cuysheffield, Head of Crypto at @Visa, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover where value accrues in the agent economy, stablecoins vs. cards and the value propositions, the trust problem with open x402 endpoints, autonomous agents, headless merchants, why agents buying tokens will dwarf everything else, and why he thinks agents should stay accountable to a human. 0:00 Intro 1:49 Where does the value accrue 2:31 Payment networks vs payment infrastructure 5:24 Trust and governance is the missing piece 6:37 Anyone can spin up an x402 endpoint 7:53 Why a crypto vet won't give agents a wallet 10:17 Headless merchants are the big opportunity 11:35 Sell workflows, not tools 13:43 The demand side is the harder problem 19:25 Where the first billion gets spent 23:15 Token share on inference 25:02 Problems with agent spend 26:49 Agents buying tokens dwarfs everything 33:04 Should agents be self-sovereign? 35:06 Every individual becomes their own corporation 36:24 Visa Intelligent Commerce and TAP 39:22 Visa CLI for developers 41:30 The browser-to-checkout gap 44:31 New merchants built for agents 46:28 Where the alpha is

Agents Will Run Their Own Businesses: Inside Laso, agent payment cards, and Agent Commerce Shoal Signal with @huntermmonk, Founder at @lasofinance, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover how Laso gives agents their own one-time-use cards to spend anywhere with no KYC, why self-sovereign spending is the through-line, where x402, @PayWithLocus and Policy stack fit, why the real prize is agents starting their own businesses rather than shopping for you, and the AGI risk that could make frictionless agent payments unnecessary. 0:00 Intro and what Laso builds 2:35 Why one-time-use cards work 3:58 Self-sovereign spending and privacy 5:43 What agents actually buy 7:35 Agents running their own businesses 8:26 How an agent gets a card 11:49 x402, Locus, and Policy 15:43 Reading radio ads on TV 17:47 Markets two through twenty 24:09 Rethinking agent to agent commerce 29:50 What people get wrong 36:52 The AGI risk to Laso 43:48 Defensibility and the risks 45:40 The agent bank account coming 47:27 Betting on agent entrepreneurship 49:02 Closing alpha

Agents Already Spent $76 Million: Circle's AI Agent stack, x402, stablecoins and the Agentic Economy Shoal Signal with @corey__cooper, Senior Manager, DevRel at @circle, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover how Circle is building the agent money stack with $USDC, @ARC, x402, why EIP-3009 makes payments gasless, who is actually transacting today, whether SaaS is dead, and why agents buying their own services points to a trillion dollar TAM. 0:00 What Circle is building for agents 3:01 Why x402 matters for builders 6:54 USDC, gasless transfers, and facilitators 10:57 The Circle agent stack and nano payments 14:17 Who is using x402 and for what 16:46 Pay-per-use flattens the internet 19:50 A new persona, and $76 million transacted 23:03 What is missing for agent to agent 28:05 Every app has APIs, the TAM is trillions 29:26 Is SaaS dead 31:57 Discovery as the real value layer 36:28 How Circle curated its marketplace 41:23 Why it has to run on stablecoins 46:00 Cash App to agent in one second 49:38 Where the alpha is, trading on Robinhood 52:08 Try it yourself

Agents Are the New Websites: MoonPay's AI Lead, Tony Plasencia on the CLI Bet and Agent Commerce Shoal Signal with @tonyplasencia3, AI and agents lead at @moonpay, hosted by @zaddycoin We cover why everything is just a tool call, the pivot from chat to CLI, the big-three orchestrators and a finance-first Perplexity, why agents are the new websites, a curated skills marketplace, and how x402 expands TAM below the subscription floor. 0:00 Intro and Tony's path through Solana 2:40 Everything is just tool calls, and the CLI pivot 5:09 From orchestrator to spoke in the stack 8:09 The big three and verticalized orchestrators 11:10 Real use cases, prediction markets to commerce 12:46 Headless merchants and agent-ready catalogs 17:06 Agent SEO and "agents are the new websites" 20:24 A curated skills marketplace, not malware 21:33 Routing as a Michelin chef and sous chefs 25:51 What comes next, back to verticalized chat 29:22 What enterprises actually ask for 31:51 Charging on results, proving your value 36:00 Stablecoins, Iron, and the licensing moat

Every second, tens of millions of HTTP requests are sent over the internet on average. What do the underlying rails look like money starts to move money at the same scale? In our latest piece, we dive into HTTP 402, its emerging landscape and how it fits into agentic commerce

AI is changing the credit market. Secured, asset-backed loans against compute is the future. @0xZergs explains why GPU-backed credit is becoming a new debt category. Watch the full interview with @Shoalresearch.