The entire ad-funded internet exists because of one missing capability in 2008: no way to move a fraction of a cent. Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer explains why stablecoin payments for AI agents remove that constraint, and why he would not build Android the same way today.Few people have watched the internet's business model form from as many seats as Nikhil Chandhok, an early Google and YouTube product lead who launched YouTube on the first iPhone, ran AR at Meta, and is now CPTO at Circle, issuer of USDC. His argument here is blunt: mobile app ecosystems went ad supported by constraint, not by choice, because nothing underneath them could clear a microtransaction, and much of what we now call DeFi was simply unbuildable in 2008. He walks through Circle Agent Stack and the Arc blockchain competing internally for the same developers, why Circle will not lock agents onto its own chain, and why settlement finality is the feature that actually matters once agents start trading. Recorded with Sri Misra weeks before Arc's public mainnet, the conversation lands as tokenization, onchain credit, and non dollar stablecoins move from thesis to roadmap.👉Why the Android and early iPhone app economies defaulted to advertising, and what that reveals about payment rails as a core platform primitive rather than a feature bolted on later👉How nanopayments and agent wallets unlock business models that were structurally impossible when Google and Facebook ad networks were the only monetization option available to developers👉What happens inside Circle when Agent Stack is mandated to grow USDC on every chain while Arc is mandated to grow Arc, a tension Chandhok compares to Google Maps shipping on iOS👉Why settlement finality is the single argument Arc has to win with agent developers running onchain trading, and what unwinding a trade would do to that model👉How cheaper company formation plus fully auditable onchain activity could move credit underwriting itself on chain, one of the founding ideas behind Arc👉Why Nikhil thinks saying no to stablecoins is like saying no to the internet, and why non dollar stablecoins still have a real role even if the dollar stays dominantSubscribe to un# for weekly conversations at the frontier of crypto, AI, and money, and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra/ for daily insights.00:00 - Why Payment Rails Shape Every Platform00:49 - How Money Decides User Experience01:01 - Why Android Became An Ad Business02:47 - Payments As Core Platform Capability03:03 - Are Agent Wallets Native To Arc03:32 - Agent Stack Versus Arc Inside Circle04:48 - Building A Neutral Stablecoin Stack05:25 - Next Two Years In Digital Assets05:57 - Tokenization And Onchain Credit Formation08:02 - Will Every Country Issue Stablecoins#NikhilChandhok #Circle #USDC #ArcBlockchain #CircleAgentStack #SriMisra#Stablecoins #StablecoinPayments #AgenticEconomy #AIAgentPayments #Nanopayments #Tokenization #RWA #DeFi #OnchainCredit #FutureOfPayments #StablecoinRegulation #CryptoPodcast #web3payments Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.