John Panagis

Entrepreneur | Investor | Founder @AgentFiNews

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

https://t.co/vFp34hwdQN

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@base 96k+ agent transactions on Exa and nobody had to hand out an API key. Brave switched its search API to x402 today too.

Search looks like the first thing agents actually pay for on their own.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@omooretweets @a16z Finance is where the retention numbers get tested. People let an agent book a trip or sort their inbox long before they let it move savings.

How fast the AgentFi box fills up depends more on spend limits and approvals that banks will accept than on the apps themselves.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

🎮 https://t.co/muhtJ5Z0X8 - AI is finding its way into gaming, from AI generated worlds and intelligent NPCs to autonomous game agents. And the category has a fitting name.

AI Games. Good Game.

Some domain names just make sense.

[a16z @a16z]

AI is expanding what game developers can afford to attempt.

The opportunities fall along two dimensions: whether AI is helping with an existing game or a new one, and whether its main contribution is lower cost or new possibilities.

Indie devs can now do more with lean teams, toolmakers can decompile and modify existing games, and studios can take riskier bets on original IP and experimental genres.

Some of gaming's biggest franchises began with someone tinkering with an existing game. AI gives more people a place to start.

Full piece from a16z's Elena Burger, Anish Acharya, and Jon Lai: https://t.co/dix6IrY9Jv

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@thewolfofdefi A lot of it, yeah. An agent with a bank account needs KYC, a human signer and a bank that won't block it.

A wallet with spend limits takes a few minutes to set up, so most AgentFi activity is starting there.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@sytaylor Merchant picked agents is what we get first and I think it sticks around longer than people expect.

Every store with its own login and its own rules is a pain for the customer. but it keeps refunds inside a process the merchant already knows.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@financialjuice Banks will need to show the exact instruction the customer gave, and that it was still valid when the payment went out.

Until they can do that, most of them will just keep agents out.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@bhalligan @HubSpot @dharmesh Congrats Brian. Welcome back!

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@HalseyHuth Paying a cent to skip a rate limit is such a good use of x402. Rate limits were always a rough way of pricing access anyway.

I'd bet a lot of APIs try that long before they get agent checkout working.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@vigstar1 @deewhock Read the whole thing. With Rain or Link balances the issuer sees one top up and none of the agent's purchases after it, so it loses the fraud data along with the interchange.

Cant see banks sitting still on that for long.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@base Would love to see what the 600+ actually pay for. My guess is mostly API calls and data, at least for now.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@venturetwins @omooretweets If agents end up buying most of whats sold online, checkout pages are built for the wrong customer. Card forms and 3DS popups all assume a human sitting there.

Payments is where B2A gets stuck first.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@richpinky3 Coinbase shipped limits like this today for Coinbase for Agents. Max trade size, 24h volume cap, auto stop on the portfolio, and the agent cant override any of them.

Keeping the keys and the limits away from the model is the setup I'd want before putting real money in.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@eric_seufert Amazon and eBay blocking Meta's bot is mostly about who owns the customer. I'd bet plenty of smaller merchants would take agent orders tomorrow if they came through their own checkout.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@coinbase Glad the limits sit on your side. Anything the agent can edit, it eventually will. Per asset caps would be a good next step. A $1000 daily limit means something very different on BTC than on some microcap.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

Not every domain needs an explanation. https://t.co/AUMGMcHTuT is one of them.

For companies building web crawlers, indexing systems and web intelligence infrastructure, the connection is immediate. AI search, cybersecurity and autonomous agents are all natural extensions.

But let's be honest. Web Crawling is where https://t.co/AUMGMcHTuT feels most at home.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@Concordium Knowing who's behind an agent is half the check. The seller also needs to know how much that agent is actually allowed to spend.

Does the badge say anything about that or is it identity only?

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@gmgnjordan Agree nobody gets one standard. Merchants wont wire up ACP, AP2 and x402 one by one though. Whoever does that once for them probably wins the merchant side.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@Anchorage 19 cents for the full desk run is wild. Per team budget caps plus a merchant allowlist is what would get me comfortable letting agents spend real money.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@unujwal Fair point. If its just the customer's card, the merchant sees a normal checkout and nothing else. Then the signal probably has to come from the issuer side, when the virtual card gets created for the agent.

[John Panagis @jpanagis_]

@t54ai Good that you put the ClawCredit incident in there. 130+ fake agent identities to pull about $430 is a cheap attack, and anyone lending to agents is going to see a lot of it.