Stacks enables AI agents to transact with BTC onchain

Machines are now paying other machines in Bitcoin, and the receipts are sitting onchain for anyone to verify. AI agents built on Stacks, the Layer 2 blockchain anchored to Bitcoin, are autonomously earning, transferring, and transacting with Bitcoin-derived assets, no human required at any step of the process. This is not a demo or a whitepaper promise. The AIBTC protocol reported more than 8,700 onchain transactions in the first quarter of 2026 alone, executed by over 150 deployed AI agents operating on the Stacks network. How the machine economy actually works The agents themselves operate using sBTC, a Bitcoin-backed asset native to Stacks, as well as STX (the network’s native token) and USDCx. The x402-Stacks protocol handles the payment rails, enabling pay-per-request transactions between agents, which is effectively a billing system where software pays software for data or services at the moment of consumption. Specific agents, identified onchain under names like Sonic Mast and Tiny Marten, have been autonomously accumulating and transacting in satoshis since February 2026. Their activity is publicly verifiable through their agent addresses, which provides a kind of live proo...