Speaker 0:  a viral substack post just wiped out over 80 oh, sorry. 800,000,000,000 from tech market by predicting an artificial intelligence saas pocalypse. if you think your software subscription and credit card points are safe, wall street's massive panic proves the entire digital economy is about to be rewritten. so this ai triggers a wall street saas pocalypse, a highly detailed macroeconomic thought experiment by citrini research paired with anthropic's powerful cloud co work released as released sparked a massive sell off across software, fintech, and payment sectors. investors are panicking that autonomous ai agents using stablecoins will entirely bypass credit card network and make traditional softwares as a service business models completely obsolete. this directly threatens the multibillion dollar transaction fee revenue models of giants like visa, mastercard, servicenow, and accelerating a structural shift towards an automated machine to machine economy. and this might be the thing that starts, the cryptocurrency stablecoin, revolution accelerating to the next level. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  i thought this was really cool, and super, super scary. but let's talk about kind of a few things that it touched on. so the first one was the death of the middleman, which was that ai agents may eliminate intermediaries. so today, companies like doordash, uber, expedia, they earn money by connecting parties together and taking a percentage of transactions. and so what this report argued was that future ai systems could negotiate, they could purchase, they could book, and they could coordinate services directly. so if ai agents transact with each other, many of the existing, we'll call them, toll booth businesses could lose their economic moat. and so investors immediately started questioning whether these business models remain viable in a highly agentic ai future. the next one was this white collar job displacement, which the scenario had imagined unemployment exceeding 10% as ai rapidly automate. so we're talking analysts, accountants, programmers, customer service workers, legal researchers, consultants, and and administrative staff. so, historically, automation displaced manual labor first. and so the ai revolution is unusual because it targets cognitive labor. and so this is why some economists believe that ai could create a very different transition than prior industrial revolutions. one of the more intellectual, ideas from the report was this ghost gdp. and so the theory suggested that ai could increase productive output while reducing the number of economic transactions. so for example, one ai replaces 10 analysts. productivity rises. salaries disappear. consumer spending falls. so traditional gdp metrics might still show economic activity occurring, but the wealth distribution mechanism breaks down. so there are a lot of cool but scary things that, to me, seem possible. what about you?

Speaker 0:  well, it's beyond possible. as you know

Speaker 1:  i used the wrong word.

Speaker 0:  that's all i know. i just as you know, i run opencloud toronto, and i deal with builders all the time. and i even judged a couple of weeks ago, one of our regulars come out, and they have, x four zero three payment gateway for agents where you give your agents credits and they buy whatever they need at the time. and it's on, whatever network it has to be on so they can go and you give it a wallet and whatnot. so if they need api calls, they can just pay for them at the time and off you go. we're moving to that. we're moving to an agent first web, and as a result, the agent's payment is gonna be a high priority from moving forward, and they'll take care of the hassle. they'll take care of the hassle of all the back end stuff that the average consumer doesn't understand when it comes to these payment gateways. so that'll change things. it'll slowly quickly become an invisible tech where you'll have your agent will have a wall. you'll see this stuff happen. it'll, like, either ask you for approval or have predetermined approval, and off you go. it has to happen. and, you know, we're now moving to web four or whatever we're gonna call. like i said, the agent first web. we've we've talked about before this for startup fest, they have a ai agent. your ai agents can talk to you to book, conference rooms, to book places to meet, to book all sorts of stuff so that your ai agent can talk to the conference, ai agent to talk to everyone else's ai agent so that you can get your calendar fully booked. tell me we're not at an ai first web when that stuff is what's happening.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. that kind of blew me away. so, i'm going to start up in montreal in july. and, this, what it does is it registers. it builds presence. it works the room. it returns with reasons and recommendations and sets up meetings, and and it does everything an assistant would do but more, which i'm excited to test out to see how it does. called, it's called envoy in french, but those that are english speaking, envoy, e n v o i. it's really cool.

Speaker 0:  here, if anybody wants to take a look, and, we'll get back to our article in a minute because it's that was really just a side, hustle or it's not hustle, a side jaunt about this whole ai agent and yeah. we're just kicking out. this, think of this update like upgrading a congested highway toll road to an instant free teleporter. right now, every time you buy something online, your money passes through corporate toll booths like visa, mastercard, which pocket a percentage of the fee, while the platform software platforms you charge a hefty monthly subscription just to manage the paperwork. this paradigm means your personal ai system bypasses the toll roll entirely, instantly teleporting digital currency straight to the vendor for zero fees while building its own software on the fly. so this has to happen, you know, whether it's, you know, this technology or whatever. but the concept we're moving towards is a cost free micropayment digital wallet for your ai agent. just think of it like tap and pay. you give it so much, and it's allowed to do kinda what it wants, and it gives you a report, and you'd set up the approvals and what. it has to happen because like, let's face it. every time there's a demo, hey. have ai book your travel arrangements. have ai book this. well, how can it do that without payment?

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  and so the question becomes the mastercard, visa, they're scrambling because they don't really have the structure to handle this properly by limiting your agent preapproval, all that kind of stuff or in line approval. your agent wants to buy something, you know, you just tap yes or what have you. it doesn't have the infrastructure for that, but other things do. and start ups and ai are moving faster than the banks and credit cards can move. doesn't mean what's gonna happen here is the credit cards and the banks will buy these gateways, these companies that produce these, payment gateways, these ai agent, payment tools, and they'll just still take a percentage of the fee, but just add a small level because that's just what's gonna happen. they won't move fast enough, but they have enough money to buy whoever, is moving fast enough. so we'll see how that hap works out.

Speaker 1:  yeah. i hope they don't sell to these credit card companies. i hope that we get this just another option to circumvent credit card companies. but, again, probably won't, but that's just my, that's my hope. but, so, the story here is it just goes to show that investors were already nervous about this ai stuff. and so, like, let's just let's let's be let's be serious here. a single essay doesn't erase hundreds of billions of dollars in market value unless investors are already questioning their assumptions. right? absolutely. like, it's not like, this, like, just, like, came out of nowhere and investors spooked. no. they were already spooked. so, the thing is traditional markets, they would traditionally respond to earnings, interest rates, inflation, geopolitics. but now what's scary is that narratives are becoming market moving events, which scares the crap out of me because people can generate this stuff with ai.

Speaker 0:  yeah. and this is happening now, with the agentic market spending projected to hit mass markets by 2030. like, two weeks ago, i judged not a pitch competition, but an agentic ai builds competition, specifically, implementing x four zero two payment gateways for agent payments. and there's a bunch of apps, competing, and it's great. like, this stuff is happening now. free to alter low cost transact transactional architecture designed to strip strip away the hidden 1.5 to 3.5% processing fees currently baked into consumer products. so your personal ai agent can autonomously purchase and manage your software apps or delivery orders behind the scenes without you ever pulling out a credit card or clicking the payment industry until the payment industry buys this industry out.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. the the there's so much that's going to happen and changes that are going to happen, and things are gonna happen so fast in the next five, two, three, five years even. that is, it's gonna blow us away. it's gonna blow my mind, and, things are gonna be changing drastically. not to be a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday person, but it's crap's happening fast. yeah. i wouldn't say it's doomsday.

Speaker 0:  it's just that the world is changing very, very fast. like, every time we talk about quantum encryption is coming closer and closer to it all being cracked. so, you know, who's gonna move faster on this? mastercard, visa, or these agent ai x four zero two encryption gateways? you know, what are you gonna trust for the future? i think the world is really, really changing. and juniper research projects the agent to commerce could reach 1,500,000,000,000 globally by 2030. so ai is rapidly turning software from a product you buy on autonomous employee direct, threatening to shatter legacy payment networks and subscription fees along all the way. are you ready to hand over your keys to let an ai agent spend your real money completely on auto autopilot, or are you keeping your hand firmly on your wallet? let us know in the chat. we'd love to hear from you.