The post Bots have wallets, and the machine economy has arrived. appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Opinion by: Paige Xu, chief operating officer of OpenMind We all love an Uber Eats moment. You tap your phone, and a burrito is en route. But what if, this time, no human driver is weaving through traffic to deliver it? Instead, a sidewalk robot hums along the pavement, guided by sensors and AI, or an autonomous car with a humanoid delivers it to your door, solving the last-mile problem. The beauty of this experience lies in what you don’t see. As it journeys across town, this robot is transacting on top of delivering the orders. It pays a toll with onchain dollars to cross a private smart road, and it tips a decentralized navigation oracle for the fastest detour. Then it tops up at a solar-powered kiosk with a micro-payment, and the moment it completes your delivery, it earns a service fee deposited into its own onchain treasury. This is what machine-to-machine commerce looks like.  Bots with wallets We’ve spent the past decade handing autonomy to algorithms, letting them recommend our music, curate our news, and trade our stocks. But now we’re giving that autonomy money — and with it, agency. With access to decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts and machine-readable APIs, wallets unlock real autonomy for machines to negotiate terms in real-time with charging stations, service providers and peers; earn income by offering services like delivery, data collection and infrastructure maintenance; spend on operational needs, like fuel, repairs and software updates. In essence, bots evolve from tools into agents, economic participants in their own right. The rise of synthetic labor For centuries, labor meant humans performing tasks for wages. These days, we’re witnessing the beginning of synthetic labor where robots and AI agents provide services and earn revenue onchain, potentially funding their own existence. A delivery bot could…

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Filed under: News - @ June 1, 2025 3:23 pm