Everything You Need to Know about x402: The 30-Year-Old HTTP Code Built for the AI Economy

Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform, joins the Consensus mainstage to make the case for internet-native payments. The internet was built for humans, but AI agents are taking over and they don't click ads. x402 is an open standard that finally gives the web a native payment layer, built on a forgotten HTTP status code that's been sitting unused since 1994. Created by Reppel and now backed by Visa, Stripe, Cloudflare, Microsoft, and others under the Linux Foundation, it lets any agent pay for any content or API with two lines of code and a stablecoin transaction that costs less than a cent. - Timecodes: 00:00 - Erik from x402 at Consensus Miami 2026 00:48 - The Internet Was Designed for Humans, Not Agents  03:53 - AI Is About to Break the Internet's Economic Model  05:03 - Defining What an Agent Actually Is  08:59 - Open Protocols vs Walled Gardens  12:21 - x402: An Open Standard for Internet Native Payments  15:02 - Why Now Is the Right Time for Agentic Payments