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Agentic commerce

Facilitate low-cost, instant payments for agents to autonomously execute transactions.

From: Tempo: The Blockchain Designed for Payments.

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As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, coauthors Petter Törnberg, AI and social media assistant professor, and research assistant Maik Larooij simulated a social media platform that was populated entirely by AI chatbots, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o large language model, to see if there was anything we could do to stop social media from turning into echo chambers.
They tested out six specific intervention strategies — including switching to chronological news feeds, boosting diverse viewpoints, hiding social statistics like follower counts, and removing account bios — to stop the platform from turning into a polarized hellscape.
To their dismay, none of the interventions worked to a satisfactory degree, and only some showed modest effects. Worse yet, as Ars Technica reports, some of them made the situation even worse.

From: Scientists Created an Entire Social Network Where Every User Is a Bot, and Something Wild Happened.

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When Patrick Collision of Stripe announced the launch of the Tempo blockchain he described it as the `”payments-oriented L1” optimised for financial services in the real world. This is, generally speaking, because they were designed with other goals in mind. In particular, they were designed to be censorship resistant and able to find consenus even in the presence of untruthworthy participants, neither of which are of interest to mainstream financial services organisations. 

Same As The Old Boss

Tempo’s “design partners” include Visa, banks and challenger banks, so naturally some commentators wondered just how interesting a development this new ditributed ledger really is. Christian Catalini frames the issue with characterisitc insight, saying the if “corproate chains” such as Tempo succeed that it will be that crypto was not a revolution, but a failed coup. If we replace existing financial sector incumbents and payment networks with new players and schemes run by new fintech giants, will anything really change for the individual, organisational and goverment payers and payees?

Not The Same As The Old Boss

At the time of the launch, Collision said that Tempo will help with payment acceptance, global payouts, remittances, microtransactions, tokenized deposits, agentic payments “and more”. This will certainly shine what Edwar Prasad calls “a harsh light on pervasive inefficiencies in modern financial systems” and clearly show how the new technology of distributed ledgers can deliver fast, cost-effective and inclusive systems for both domestic and cross-border payments.

The best response to the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins is not to encourage the use of domestic currency private versions or even issuing retail central bank digital currencies.

Instead, the priority should be to develop more robust and inclusive domestic payment systems.

Commercial banks will find it difficult to survive if they cede their role in intermediating payments. They must find ways, through the adoption of new technologies but also by offering better products and service, to compete.

Stablecoins are playing a valuable role in catalysing improvements in financial markets and forcing commercial and central banks to up their game. This will be their true legacy.

From: Stablecoins will force finance to modernise.

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I think this is also an argument in favour of not only open banking, but open everything in order to bring real competition to the finance sector.

The fact is that no-one wants to be their own bank. We (the public) want instuttions that will protect us in a regualtoed environemtn that has business models other than insiers ripping the facts off of outsiders.

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What makes the situation fascinating is the paradox at its heart. After a decade of spectacularly failed attempts to build their own private blockchain clubs, the big banks are finally, grudgingly, coming around to the idea that open, permissionless networks are the only way forward. At the very same moment, a new generation of challengers, led by Stripe and Circle, are betting everything on the opposite idea: that the future belongs to slick, branded, proprietary chains.

From: Stripe’s Tempo And The Ghost Of Facebook’s Libra’s Past.

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What stablecoins are really doing is shining a harsh light on pervasive inefficiencies in modern financial systems and showing how new technologies can fix them by creating efficient, cheap and broadly accessible means of domestic and cross-border payments.

The best response to the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins is not to encourage the use of domestic currency private versions or even issuing retail central bank digital currencies.

Instead, the priority should be to develop more robust and inclusive domestic payment systems.

Commercial banks will find it difficult to survive if they cede their role in intermediating payments. They must find ways, through the adoption of new technologies but also by offering better products and service, to compete.

Stablecoins are playing a valuable role in catalysing improvements in financial markets and forcing commercial and central banks to up their game. This will be their true legacy.

From: Stablecoins will force finance to modernise.

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The best response to the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins is not to encourage the use of domestic currency private versions or even issuing retail central bank digital currencies. These approaches are Band-Aids that won’t fix the deeper problems that bedevil countries’ financial systems and enfeeble their currencies.

Instead, the priority should be to develop more robust and inclusive domestic payment systems. Let a thousand payment systems bloom, with suitable regulation to maintain payment system integrity and minimise counterparty risk. Stablecoins, tokenised bank deposits and third party payment providers all have a role to play. Retail central bank digital currencies might fill in gaps in some countries.

From: Stablecoins will force finance to modernise.

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Stablecoin issuers could therefore be lured into the “temptation” to invest in different assets that “carry higher returns and are riskier”, he said.

From: Stablecoins could trigger taxpayer bailouts, warns Nobel economics laureate.

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The shift to AI agents will change how work gets done and who holds power, since they control access to end customers. Although many industries will be affected, the change will start where activities/products are simpler or more standardized, such as in consumer goods. These companies often deal with relatively simple products but complex streams of information, and AI agents could quickly change the role of retailers and brands, as well as how customers evaluate, decide, and buy products. Here’s how—and what companies can do to prepare.

From: AI Agents Are Changing How People Shop. Here’s What That Means for Brands..

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One of the facets of the Frontier token that make it stand apart from other players in the space, namely USDC (of Circle) and USDT (of Tether) is that the interest earnings on reserve assets will be reinvested for education and other publicly oriented initiatives within the state. This framework means that 1) other states now have a framework to follow to mitigate arguments stating that stablecoins exist primarily for the enrichment of issuers, and 2) stablecoins issued by states have the opportunity to assist in closing the budget gaps that plague numerous states and municipalities in the nation.

From: What Wyoming’s Frontier Token Means For Stablecoin Adoption.

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This is one of those things where once you see it, you start to see it everywhere. Your internet bill creeps steadily higher once that initial yearlong promotional offer ends. The same thing happens with car insurance and cellphone plans. Your credit card interest rate is probably higher than when you opened the account, and your bank account savings rate may be lower now, too. After a few adjustments to the reimbursement rate, those airline miles don’t go as far as they used to, either.

In this day and age, it’s par for the course for things to become more expensive over time. The newbies often get better deals, and the long-term customers get screwed. Companies lean on switching costs and take advantage of limited competition to keep people on the hook, and they make a pretty penny in the process. In an era when workplace loyalty is dying, maybe consumer loyalty is on the way out, too.

From: Consumer Loyalty Is Dead: Companies Charge Longtime Customers More – Business Insider.

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When I call up Peter Fader, a marketing professor at Wharton who focuses on consumer loyalty and customer value, to talk about the loyalty penalty, he first explains that some of what I’m describing is not, in his mind, true loyalty. True loyalty is “your inclination to stay with something despite good reasons and good capabilities to switch to something else,” he says. “It’s not just the fact that you repeatedly do a thing, it’s the fact that you aren’t locked into doing it.” In other words, it’s when you can easily go grab a banana, but you’re sticking with oranges, or eating only Chiquita bananas despite a generic brand sitting right next to them. Or in a non-banana example, you know, like marriage.

What many consumers are facing is coerced loyalty — barriers that keep people from changing things up or trying out competitors.

From: Consumer Loyalty Is Dead: Companies Charge Longtime Customers More – Business Insider.

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