The internet's long-missing payments layer may finally be falling into place as artificial intelligence converges with crypto, according to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. "I think this is the grand unification basically of AI and crypto is what’s about to happen now," Andreessen said on the "Latent Space" podcast earlier this month. The modern internet was built without native payments, hence the long-unused HTTP status code "402 Payment Required." But stablecoins and AI agents can now fix that gap and reshape online commerce, Andreessen said. In the early web, developers left a placeholder for payments that ... (full story)