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Franklin Templeton links agentic AI micropayments to altcoins
The firm’s digital assets chief says card networks charge about 2% to 3% plus roughly $0.30 per transaction, while agentic payments average about $0.001, making onchain tokens the funding layer for machine-to-machine activity.
Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets and innovation, Sandy Kaul, argued that investors focused only on AI stocks may miss what she sees as the next phase for autonomous, agentic AI. In an essay posted on Franklin Templeton’s verified X account, Kaul said capturing the value of decentralized networks that power onchain AI agents will likely require exposure to cryptocurrencies and altcoins.
Kaul’s core rationale is about transaction economics. She said traditional payment rails are not built for machine-to-machine micropayments, citing that a typical card transaction averages 2% to 3% plus an approximately $0.30 flat fee, compared with AI agent payments she described as averaging about $0.001 for a single second of compute or a data query.
She added that, under this model, agent transactions move to blockchains because each recorded transaction requires payment in the underlying network token. Kaul cited examples of emerging machine payment standards, including Coinbase’s x402 standard, now associated with the Linux Foundation, and a Machine Payments Protocol from Stripe and Visa.
Kaul also pointed to external estimates that agentic commerce could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030, and said 38% of organizations report they will have AI agents working alongside humans by 2028. The post did not name specific token recommendations, though Kaul referenced Solana’s SOL as an example of a network fee asset, and included risk disclosures noting crypto can involve risk of total loss.
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