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Production note: I’ll be taking a short summer break 🏖 Thursday-Saturday of this week.
x402 revives an HTTP status code that sat unused since the 1990s: 402 Payment Required. An API can answer a request by asking for payment, and a machine can settle it with no card, no account, and nobody approving it. Small protocol change, large consequences for how agents buy data.
**→ **Check out the explainer from Allium Research: https://allium.so/blog/x402-explained-the-internet-native-payments-standard-for-apis-data-and-agent-commerce/
And get weekly onchain data and more analysis like this from the Allium Research team on Substack.
Some notable Bitcoin think-pieces
Markets: now we’re talkin’
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A relatively short and low-key email today as I had an unexpected schedule squeeze this morning. Below, I share three pieces on Bitcoin that are worth digesting, whether you care about the asset or not. Two touch on the relationship between Bitcoin and AI, one on how Bitcoin culture is changing for the better.
Jordi starts out summarizing his view of the previous two years as Bitcoin’s “silent IPO”: the ETFs and political acceptance, then the October 2025 peak and subsequent slump, represented a redistribution of ownership from early believers to a broader, more institutional buyer base.
He then reframes the question of AI impact by suggesting traditional metrics no longer apply. Time, for instance – it was the old operating system, the hidden governor of output. AI disrupts this by replacing time with tokens, units of machine labour and cognition. How will GDP measure that?
As operating time compresses, so will economic time. The rails of an AI economy need to be continuous. Crypto will become the architecture that supports finance built for and run by machines, or run by humans on machine time.
“Stablecoins and specialized rails may do much of that work. But Bitcoin remains the proof and the foundation: a scarce, globally transferable digital bearer asset outside the discretionary expansion of any one credit system. It can become increasingly relevant as neutral collateral and long-duration savings while more transactional layers of crypto evolve above it.”
See also:
Bitcoin benefits from AI wealth(Apr 2026)Bitcoin’s IPO(Nov 2025)
The founder of Gridless reflects on what four years of powering rural electric grids with Bitcoin mining has taught him.
One is that the economics of energy distribution are largely misunderstood. An area can be abundant in the resources for renewable energy but lack the potential market size to make it viable. Until, that is, a location-agnostic industrial energy consumer that can pay for itself enters the scene.
Once grids are powering previously underserved communities, you know what else they can be used for? Powering datacentres. This doesn’t mean Bitcoin mining is replaced – it does mean a priority stack evolves, with Bitcoin the floor consumer.
(chart via Gridless)
Gridless’ proprietary software can route power to the highest-value use at any given time. This will usually be GPU compute, but not always as the equipment is more expensive and depreciates faster. The higher-value demand layer makes financing the build more attractive for partners while Bitcoin continues to monetize any surplus.
In sum, it’s an ingenious solution to both the poor economics of rural electrification and the unmet demand in Africa for small-scale local compute.
Long one of the more sober early voices in Bitcoin, Nic puts a nail in the coffin for the asset’s maximalists by assigning a grade to their basic tenets:
Altcoins will become irrelevant
The stock-to-flow price appreciation model will dictate BTC’s price (wow, a blast from the past, haven’t heard S2F mentioned in ages!)
Bitcoin will evolve from a store of value to a medium of exchange
Fiat currencies
The only consensus algorithm that works is Proof of Work
Bitcoin is morally good and will transform society for the better
Self-custody is essential
And more…
(chart by Nic Carter)
He also acknowledges they were right about some things: Bitcoin has survived, while most alternatives haven’t.
But maximalism is on the ropes, and even applications built around Bitcoin (Lightning, Liquid, Nostr and others) are struggling to gain traction.
“Maximalism confuses Bitcoin’s success with the vindication of maximalism itself. The asset and protocol can succeed while the radical ideology around it fails. And, indeed, that is more or less what has happened. Bitcoin thrived and became a global monetary asset of consequence. The elaborate body of prophecy around it ended up being a poor description of what success would look like.”
