Block wants Bitcoin to handle the tiny payments AI agents make while getting things done online.

The company announced on September 24 that it had joined the x402 Foundation and contributed Lightning payments to the protocol. Its announcement puts Bitcoin into an open standard for software that can request and pay for services. Block sees fast, inexpensive transactions as essential to that market. The development gives Bitcoin holders a practical adoption story to follow beyond the next price target.

The proposed customer is often a program acting for a person or business. Think of an agent paying for a piece of data it needs to complete a task. The payment could happen within its interaction with the service, without a person stepping through...