AAVE’s technical structure is cracking at $92 with bearish momentum accelerating toward $80 support. The setup demands a swift breakdown before any legitimate recovery can target $120 by year-end.
AAVE’s Critical Juncture
AAVE sits at $92.12 in a deteriorating technical position that’s about to resolve violently. The token has rejected every attempt to reclaim meaningful resistance while bears systematically dismantled support levels. This isn’t consolidation – it’s controlled demolition ahead of a capitulation move.
The price action shows classic distribution patterns where smart money exits into retail strength. AAVE’s position deep in the lower Bollinger Band territory signals oversold conditions, but oversold can become more oversold in bear markets. The momentum indicators paint a picture of sellers in complete control, with buying interest evaporating at current levels.
Market Structure Breakdown
Derivatives positioning reveals the harsh reality facing AAVE bulls. While large traders maintain 60% long exposure, the aggressive selling pressure shown in the taker ratios demonstrates institutional distribution. These aren’t conviction longs – they’re trapped positions hoping for relief rallies that aren’t coming.
The futures market structure shows declining open interest alongside price weakness, indicating position closures rather than fresh shorting. This typically precedes acceleration moves as remaining weak hands get flushed out. Spot volumes remain anemic, suggesting retail has already capitulated while institutions continue methodical selling.
The Path Forward
AAVE faces an unavoidable test of $80 support within the next two weeks. The technical damage is too severe for sideways grinding – this market needs a flush to clear the deck. Analysts at Blockchain.news recognize that sustainable rallies require proper basing processes, not false hope bounces.
Once AAVE completes its capitulation move toward $80, the real accumulation phase can begin. The DeFi narrative remains intact long-term, but short-term price action must respect market structure. December presents the optimal window for recovery once selling exhaustion sets in.
Target the $80 breakdown as your entry signal rather than trying to catch falling knives at current levels. The subsequent recovery should target $120 by December if broader crypto markets cooperate with seasonal patterns. Risk management remains paramount – this market punishes premature positioning.
LDO shows classic dead cat bounce signals with smart money accumulation against retail shorts. Target $0.44 resistance before inevitable breakdown to $0.30 support.
Market Context: Why LDO is Moving Now
Lido DAO trades in a textbook distribution phase after getting crushed from $0.52 highs. The sideways grind around $0.37 reflects broader DeFi weakness, but liquid staking demand keeps institutional money flowing despite retail capitulation. Bulls and bears remain deadlocked in a battle that will resolve violently.
The 1.06% daily pump is meaningless noise within this larger consolidation. LDO sits 29% below its 200-day moving average – a breach this severe rarely reverses on first attempts. Analysts at Blockchain.news expect multiple false breakouts before any sustainable recovery begins.
Indicator Alignment
RSI at 50.97 shows zero momentum in either direction while MACD sits dead flat at the zero line. This neutral reading masks dangerous compression building beneath the surface. Bollinger Bands position LDO at 0.39 – low enough to suggest selling exhaustion but not oversold enough to guarantee a bounce.
The daily ATR of $0.03 reveals volatility has compressed to critical levels. When price action gets this quiet, explosive moves follow. The question isn’t if LDO breaks out, but which direction it chooses.
Whales & Analyst Targets
Derivatives data exposes the real positioning behind LDO’s sideways action. Retail traders pile into shorts with a 0.68 long/short ratio while smart money maintains near-balanced 0.89 exposure. This divergence creates perfect conditions for a squeeze in either direction.
The 1.57 taker buy/sell ratio confirms institutional accumulation despite bearish sentiment. Open interest dropped 5.91% as weak hands exit positions, reducing the float available for trading. With $13.1 million still committed, any catalyst triggers violent price swings.
Strategic Positioning
LDO faces immediate resistance at the $0.39 seven-day moving average, but the real battle happens at $0.44 upper Bollinger resistance. A break above this level opens the door to $0.52 previous highs, though rejection remains the higher-probability outcome.
The bear case targets $0.33 lower Bollinger support initially, then breakdown toward $0.30 psychological support. Macro DeFi headwinds combined with LDO’s broken technical structure make this the primary scenario over the next month.
Bulls need sustained volume above $0.39 to shift the narrative. Without it, expect a classic relief rally to $0.44 that traps late longs before the real selloff toward $0.30 begins.
Bitcoin may not need a new story or catalyst to push back above the psychological $100,000 level, which it has not traded above in nearly five months, according to MN Trading Capital founder Michael van de Poppe.
‘“There doesn’t need to be a narrative that pushes the price upwards,” van de Poppe said in an X post on Friday, after asking, “What narrative will bring Bitcoin to $100K?”
“Price moves upwards, and the narrative will create itself,” van de Poppe said, adding:
“That’s why simply using math, statistics, and logic is required in order to succeed, and that’s why these regions on Bitcoin are still good for accumulation.”
Van de Poppe pointed out that attention has rotated elsewhere in the technology industry, with AI and other sectors “taking the spotlight” away from Bitcoin in recent months. At the time of market close on Friday, the stock price of Nvidia (NVDA), the largest AI stock by market capitalization, is up 5.08% since Jan. 1, while Bitcoin (BTC) is down around 10% over the same period.
Bitcoin hasn’t traded above $100,000 in almost five months
The last time Bitcoin traded at $100,000 was Nov. 13, just a month after the Oct. 10 $19 billion crypto market liquidation event, which many market participants attributed to the recent five-month downtrend. Bitcoin fell to a yearly low of $60,000 in February and has since recovered to $78,250 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin is up 14.49% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap
Many crypto market participants still believe that Bitcoin needs a strong narrative to drive its price higher. In recent times, attention has centered on US Federal Reserve interest rate decisions, regulatory developments in the US, and spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows as potential catalysts.
Some also point to the potential passage of the US CLARITY Act, which aims to provide clearer rules for the industry, as a possible driver of Bitcoin’s upside.
Some say the CLARITY Act will not boost Bitcoin’s price
Others are not so sure. Veteran trader Peter Brandt told Cointelegraph in December that the CLARITY Act would be a positive step for the industry, but is unlikely to act as a major catalyst for upward movement in Bitcoin’s price.
“Is it a world-shaking macro development? Nope. Needed for sure, but not something that should redefine value,” Brandt said.
Coinbase chief legal officer Faryar Shirzad said on Friday that “It’s time” for the CLARITY Act to be finalized after new stablecoin yield provisions were published on Friday.
Meanwhile, White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt said at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas this week that a “big announcement” on US President Donald Trump’s Bitcoin reserve is coming within weeks.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Connor Howe, CEO and co-founder of cross-chain infrastructure project Enso, said that crypto protocols are not that different from centralized platforms or banks if a small group of people can freeze funds.
“The differentiation from a bank compliance officer is less than DeFi idealists will ever admit,” Howe told Cointelegraph.
The debate isn’t the usual kerfuffle between decentralization and centralization, but about who gets to intervene and how quickly they can act. In practice, it can determine whether stolen funds are stopped or slip through.
Crypto community divided on Arbitrum’s decision to freeze stolen funds. Source: Joe Hall
The limits of decentralization in DeFi
To put it simply, the industry is split on whether protocols that call themselves decentralized should be able to freeze funds during exploits.
Protocols like THORChain said they cannot freeze funds by design, even during exploits. Security researchers have questioned that claim, pointing to past cases where intervention did happen.
THORChain founder’s defense against the security community. Source: JP Thorbjornsen
Bernardo Bilotta, CEO of stablecoin infrastructure platform Stables, said the function is necessary but must operate within clear constraints.
“Freeze capabilities need to be narrowly scoped, time-limited and governed by transparent criteria that existed before the breach occurred,” Bilotta told Cointelegraph. “A protocol shouldn’t be making up the rules while the house is on fire.”
Bilotta characterized choosing “philosophical purity” over user protection as “negligence.”
The recent $293 million Kelp DAO exploit brought those discussions back into the spotlight as Arbitrum froze some of the stolen funds linked to suspected North Korean hackers. Some in the industry said the decision cut against DeFi’s grain.
The Ethereum layer-2 network has a 12-member security council with the ability to carry out certain changes to the protocol. In emergency situations, it can do so through nine of the 12 in its multisig wallet.
Arbitrum security council members are voted on by the network’s decentralized autonomous organization. Source: Arbitrum
Howe said that transparency in how such security councils operate can still separate DeFi platforms from traditional finance or their centralized counterparts.
“That’s notably different from a TradFi institution that invokes discretionary powers buried in their terms of service and guarded by their legal team,” Howe said.
“There should be transparency in every protocol around who holds the keys, and the safeguards in place to prevent them from going rogue. If there’s no clear distinction, then it’s a vague claim of decentralization.”
Centralized issuers face different constraints
Centralized stablecoins are among the most-traded cryptocurrencies in the world. Tether’s USDt and Circle’s USDC are the largest, accounting for more than $266 billion in combined market capitalization.
Both issuers have the ability to freeze their stablecoins, but they approach that function differently.
While Tether freezes funds more quickly in most security breaches, Circle emphasizes legal process and jurisdiction before intervening,
“Let me be clear about something that is frequently misunderstood: when Circle freezes USDC, it is not because we have decided, unilaterally or arbitrarily, that someone’s assets should be taken from them,” Dante Disparte, the company’s head of global policy, wrote in a recent blog post.
“Our ability to freeze funds is a compliance obligation — exercised only when we are legally compelled by an appropriate authority, through lawful process,” he continued.
Circle was pushed to explain its stance after the recent $280 million exploit on Solana-based Drift protocol, also attributed to North Korea.
Circle’s explanation did not cut it for security experts demanding answers. Source: ZachXBT
Bilotta said waiting for formal legal orders in cases with clear, onchain evidence of an exploit is a “failure of responsibility.”
Who decides what counts as “extreme”
Large-scale exploits, including those linked to North Korean actors, have pushed the industry into situations most would consider extreme, where hundreds of millions can be drained and laundered in real time.
Such cases raise the question of who defines what qualifies as “extreme” and when intervention is justified.
“This is the question the industry has been ducking the longest,” said Wish Wu, CEO of institution-focused layer-1 Pharos.
“In practice, ‘extreme’ is too often defined after the fact by whoever holds the keys, which is exactly the failure mode decentralization was meant to avoid,” he added.
Wu said the more credible approach is to define those conditions in advance and encode them into governance, even if that means accepting that some edge cases fall outside those rules.
“Can a small, identifiable group move user funds before users have a fair chance to exit?” Wu asked.
“If the answer is yes, then whatever the marketing says, the system is custodial in substance. If the answer is no, only then are we in an honest conversation about which governance and safety tradeoffs make sense for different use cases.”
Below that line, decentralization loses its substantive meaning, he added.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
US-listed spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) finished April in the green as Bitcoin rallied throughout the month.
Bitcoin ETFs drew $1.97 billion in inflows in April, well above March’s $1.37 billion, marking their highest monthly inflows of the year, according to SoSoValue data.
With inflows in March and April offsetting outflows in January and February, Bitcoin ETFs now show about $1.47 billion in net inflows for 2026. The cumulative net inflows to the products since they launched have topped $58 billion.
Monthly spot Bitcoin ETF flows in 2026. Source: SoSoValue
The April inflows came alongside a 12% rise in Bitcoin, its strongest monthly gain since April 2025, when it rose more than 14%, according to CryptoRank.
April’s data comes ahead of the 13F filing season in May, when major financial institutions will disclose their holdings in crypto ETFs for the first quarter of 2026.
ETFs post $490 million in late-month outflows
Late-month redemptions were not enough to offset April’s inflows. The ETFs saw around $490 million in outflows during three days in late April.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) was the dominant driver of gains in April, bringing around $2 billion in net inflows. On the other hand, Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) was the biggest loser, with net outflows totaling around $280 million.
Daily spot Bitcoin ETF flows by issuer since April 27, 2026. Source: Farside
The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust ETF (MSBT), which began trading on April 8, generated around $194 million in inflows, with no single day of outflows over the month.
The first month of gains for Ether ETFs since October 2025
April’s positive trend extended to some altcoin ETFs, with Ether (ETH) funds logging their first monthly inflow since October 2025, at $356 million versus about $570 million in October 2025.
Still, Ether ETFs remain in negative territory after four months of 2026, with about $413 million in net outflows year to date, according to SoSoValue. The cumulative net inflows since launch stood at about $11.9 billion.
Monthly spot Ether ETF flows since October 2025. Source: SoSoValue
XRP funds also surged in April, logging their strongest month since December 2025 with $81.6 million of inflows. The ETFs saw about $124 million in net inflows across the first four months of 2026, while total cumulative inflows stand at around $1.3 billion.
Dogecoin (DOGE) ETFs rallied in April as well, logging $2 million of inflows, accounting for roughly 21% of total cumulative inflows of about $9.6 million.
Meanwhile, Solana (SOL) ETFs saw $38.7 million in April inflows, the smallest monthly total on record, compared with cumulative inflows of about $1 billion.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Brazil’s central bank, Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), has barred the use of virtual assets in certain regulated international payment and transfer services, tightening rules for cross-border payment providers operating under the country’s eFX framework.
On Thursday, BCB published Resolution BCB No. 561, amending existing rules for eFX, a regulated category covering international payments and transfers. The resolution states that payments or receipts between an eFX provider and its foreign counterparty must be carried out exclusively through a foreign exchange transaction or movement in a non-resident Brazilian real account, with the use of virtual assets prohibited.
The restriction also applies under transitional rules for eFX providers that are not yet listed among approved provider categories. Those firms may continue providing eFX only if they apply for authorization from the central bank by May 31, 2027, but their payments and receipts must still use foreign exchange transactions or non-resident real accounts, not virtual assets.
The rule does not amount to a blanket ban on crypto transfers in Brazil. Instead, it closes off the use of crypto and stablecoins inside the regulated eFX channel, reinforcing the central bank’s effort to keep cross-border payment flows within supervised foreign exchange rails.
English translated excerpt of the BCB Resolution No. 561. Source: BCB
Brazil tightens oversight of crypto-linked cross-border flows
Brazil has been moving to fold virtual assets into its financial and foreign exchange rulebook as stablecoins become a larger part of the country’s crypto activity.
In November 2025, the central bank detailed new rules for virtual asset service providers, including authorization requirements and rules for services involving virtual assets in the foreign-exchange market.
The central bank’s push follows concern over the use of stablecoins for payments and cross-border transfers. In February, Reuters reported that BCB Governor Gabriel Galipolo said that crypto use had surged in the country over the previous two to three years, with about 90% of flows linked to stablecoins. He said that raised concerns around taxation, money laundering and asset backing.
The eFX rule comes as Brazil’s central bank has also signaled concern over stablecoins issued by companies outside its regulatory perimeter. In a technical note sent to Congress and seen by Cointelegraph Brasil, the central bank said stablecoins issued by entities not subject to BCB supervision could face a ban or strict conditions in the domestic market.
The document said real-denominated stablecoins issued outside BCB supervision may pose risks to regulatory equality and monetary sovereignty, while foreign-currency stablecoins raise concerns around jurisdiction, capital flows and fragmentation of the payments system.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
AAVE sits oversold at $92.81 with neutral RSI suggesting accumulation zone formation. Smart money positioning 62% long signals potential 6-13% bounce to $98-105 range by mid-May.
AAVE’s Technical Reality Check
AAVE’s current positioning screams oversold opportunity rather than continued decline. With RSI sitting at 43.64 in neutral territory and MACD histogram flatlining at zero, the selling pressure that drove price below all major moving averages has clearly exhausted itself. The token trades 38% below its 200-day SMA at $149.59, creating a substantial discount that savvy traders recognize.
The Bollinger Bands tell the real story here – AAVE’s position at 0.34 indicates we’re much closer to the lower band ($83.06) than the upper band ($111.87), yet still maintaining distance from true capitulation levels. This positioning typically precedes mean reversion moves, especially when daily volatility (ATR) remains elevated at $6.06, providing ample room for swift directional moves.
Volume & Price Alignment
The derivatives market reveals institutional conviction that spot prices don’t reflect. While daily volume of $7.3 million appears modest, the futures market shows significantly more conviction with open interest climbing 3.31% to $56.3 million. This expansion during price weakness indicates fresh positioning rather than liquidation-driven selling.
Most telling is the stark difference between retail and institutional sentiment. Top traders maintain a 1.62 long/short ratio (62% long) while retail traders show more modest 1.26 positioning (56% long). When smart money holds heavier long exposure than retail during weakness, it signals accumulation ahead of the next leg higher. The balanced taker buy/sell ratio of 0.92 suggests neither panic selling nor FOMO buying – exactly the type of equilibrium that precedes breakout moves.
Expert Outlook Context
The absence of recent KOL predictions creates an information vacuum that often benefits contrarian positioning. According to analysts at Blockchain.news, such periods of reduced social media attention frequently coincide with institutional accumulation phases. The lack of hype removes emotional premium from pricing while fundamental value propositions remain intact.
Without external catalysts driving price action, AAVE’s movement depends purely on technical factors and positioning dynamics. This environment typically favors mean reversion trades over momentum strategies, particularly when price sits significantly below key moving averages yet maintains healthy derivatives interest.
Forward Price Path
AAVE faces two distinct probability scenarios over the next 14-30 days. The primary path (65% probability) targets the $98-105 range, representing a 6-13% recovery that would reclaim the EMA-26 at $96.97 and approach the SMA-20 at $97.46. This move requires minimal catalyst beyond current oversold conditions and smart money positioning.
The secondary scenario (35% probability) involves further decline toward the $85-88 range if broader crypto markets deteriorate. However, strong support confluence around $91-92 (current pivot area) makes this less likely given existing institutional long bias.
Risk/reward heavily favors the upside scenario. Entry around current levels offers 6-13% upside potential against 3-5% downside to strong support. The technical setup, combined with institutional positioning and oversold conditions, creates the type of asymmetric opportunity that defines profitable swing trades in DeFi tokens.
Solana-based decentralized finance yield protocol Carrot said Thursday that it is shutting down permanently, becoming one of the first DeFi protocols to fall due to contagion from the Drift Protocol exploit in early April.
In an X post on Thursday, Carrot said the Drift exploit was “catastrophic” for the protocol and had left it financially unable to continue operating. The platform set a May 14 deadline for users to withdraw remaining funds. It said it will continue to help recovery efforts related to Drift and distribute assets once they become available.
“We are setting May 14th as the deadline to withdraw any remaining funds from Boost, Turbo, and CRT before we will then begin to deleverage the system. Your deposited funds are still yours, but all leverage will be reduced to zero, freeing up all liquidity for CRT redemption,” the protocol’s team said.
The Drift protocol exploit on April 1 was the second-largest in 2026. It was a highly coordinated attack that involved months of social engineering by a group of hackers who gained admin control and drained more than half the protocol’s total value locked.
The contagion spread to several affiliated projects such as the yield protocol Gauntlet, the lending and borrowing platform PrimeFi and the crypto fund Elemental DeFi.
Carrot was integrated with Drift’s infrastructure and used its pools to generate yield for its users. Its TVL collapsed after the Drift Protocol hack.
According to data from DefiLlama, Carrot’s total value locked was around $28 million before the Drift hack, and is currently $1.99 million, marking a decrease of roughly 93%.
Carrot’s sharp TVL drop after the Drift hack. Source: DefiLlama
DefiLlama data also shows nearly $630 million worth of digital assets were stolen in April across 25 incidents, making it the month with the largest losses since February 2025, when $1.47 billion was stolen.
The $293 million hack on liquid staking protocol Kelp is the largest exploit of 2026 so far. The Drift hack is close behind at $285 million. Together, these two attacks account for more than 90% of all crypto stolen in April.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded 32% to a 10-week high of $79,500 on April 22 from its sub-60,000 multi-year low. But recent buyers took advantage of the rally to exit as the price has since corrected to $76,000 on Thursday, with $80,000 proving a tough barrier to break.
Key takeaways:
Bitcoin sell pressure risk exists around $80,000, a resistance level that may delay the bulls.
As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin failed to break above $80,000 as its rebound fell short of a bull market comeback.
This is due to the resistance zone between the True Market Mean at $78,000 and the Short-Term Holder (STH) cost basis at $79,000, which continues to cap upward momentum, as recent buyers used this range to exit near breakeven.
“This behavior is a textbook pattern in bear markets, where price approaches the breakeven level of the most price-sensitive cohort, the incentive to exit positions overwhelms incoming demand, exhausting upside momentum,” Glassnode said in its latest Week Onchain newsletter, adding:
“With this rejection confirming overhead resistance, the mid-term bias tilts toward further downward pressure.”
Bitcoin STH cost basis model. Source: Glassnode
Bitcoin’s cost basis distribution data shows that investors hold about 475,301 BTC at an average cost of $77,800-$80,880, reinforcing the significance of this resistance zone.
After reclaiming the 50-day and 100-day simple moving averages, BTC/USD has sent “one bottoming signal after another firing on higher timeframes,” technical analyst SuperBitcoinBro said in a Wednesday post on X, adding:
“But I agree it needs to get past 80K.”
Daan Crypto Trades said the $80,000 level remains the “main level for the bulls in the short/mid term.”
BTC/USD daily chart. Source: X/Daan Crypto Trades
As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin breaking $80,000 would signal that the bulls are still in control, paving the way for the next big resistance at $84,000.
BTC selling by short-term holders halts rally
Additional onchain data shows “heavy distribution” by short-term holders, as these investors booked profits on Bitcoin’s recent rally to $80,000.
The 24-hour SMA of STH Realized Profit shows that as the price approached the $80,000 level, recent buyers realized profits at a rate of $4 million per hour.
The 24-hour SMA of STH Realized Profit is a real-time measure of how aggressively recent buyers are realizing gains.
The metric spiked as high as $7.2 million per hour on April 15, about roughly “four times the base level that had established itself since mid-April, confirming that short-term holders seized the rally as a distribution opportunity,” Glassnode said, adding:
“The buy side simply lacked sufficient liquidity to absorb this wave of profit realization, capping momentum and triggering the subsequent rejection.”
More selling pressure came from US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which have recorded outflows for three consecutive days, totaling $390 million.
This marked the longest outflow streak since March 20, when a three-day outflow streak accompanied an 11.5% BTC price drop after rejection at $76,000.
Spot BTC ETF flows chart. Source: SoSoValue
Analysts at Wise Advise said that the return to spot BTC ETF outflows after a nine-day inflow streak is the first sign that “the local top may be in.”
This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has launched an open payments protocol for artificial intelligence agents, joining a growing push by crypto and payments companies to build infrastructure that lets software agents pay for services and transact with less human input.
The new cross-chain Agent Payments Protocol (APP) is designed to let AI agents operate and communicate autonomously. OKX said Wednesday that the cross-chain standard can handle agent-to-agent payments, recurring or top-up payment flows and other automated payment arrangements across business processes. The company also said agents will be able to negotiate with each other, escrow funds and release them on verified task delivery.
OKX said the framework is built around its self-custodial Agentic Wallet and Payment SDK, with support on X Layer and broader cross-chain implementation. The company is pitching the protocol as a way for AI agents to move from simple payment requests to more autonomous commercial activity.
The launch comes as competition intensifies to build payment rails for AI agents. Google has promoted its AP2 protocol, Coinbase has its x402 standard, and Visa and Stripe-linked efforts have also moved into the space, with companies apparently trying to quickly define the rails for machine-to-machine commerce.
APP compared to the existing payment protocols. Source: OKX
OKX targets end-to-end AI agent commerce
OKX is pitching APP as a broader commerce layer rather than a simple payment button.
The company said AI agents can query real-time market data feeds, while the service responds with an HTTP 402 payment request, and agents pay per call with automatic settlement.
Agents can then hire a specialized sub-agent to complete the research task, APP opens an escrow account, and payment is released upon verification after the work is delivered.
OKX AI agent framework. Source: OKX
Developers can also use OKX’s payment tools on X Layer, where the company says some stablecoin transfers can be executed without gas fees.
The growing race to enable machine payments could also support stablecoin usage, as they can help unlock machine-to-machine payments by making microtransactions viable and enabling programmable, conditional payments between software agents without a human in the loop, Bernstein said in March.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
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