This week on The BetaKit Podcast, we’re talking protocols.
As our guest, Erik Reppel, notes, the internet we use every day is secretly just 15 protocols in a trench coat. Through his work as the head of engineering at Coinbase’s Developer Platform, he’s built a new one, x402 (you can read Coinbase’s white paper on the standard here).
It’s designed to fix what Marc Andreessen calls the original sin of the internet: failing to figure out an easy way to send money.
“ Companies have spent a lot of time and money creating really great user experience for humans. And now there’s kind of this race to create a really good experience for AI agents.”
On this episode, Reppel explains how this new internet protocol works and what cutting out payments middlemen platforms like Stripe through open standards might enable.
Being able to send and receive money at the speed of loading a web page is only part of the equation, however, and Reppel also dives into the ways cryptocurrency and AI agents can amplify the experience. If it sounds like Reppel keeps stacking future tech on top of future tech, it’s because he does, but we ground the conversation in the benefits (and risks) for humans.
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Our interview was recorded the day Coinbase revealed it had suffered from a human-engineered cyberattack that could cost the company up to 400M USD, but this episode isn’t really about the ongoing issues crypto companies are facing with security.
It’s about new tech, built upon open standards, trying to find product-market fit. And how finding it might change our relationship with money.
So, what is x402?
Let’s dig in.
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The BetaKit Podcast is edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy x402.org.