As we move deeper into 2026, the friction between AI and legacy banking has reached a breaking point. Why would an autonomous AI agent wait 3-5 business days for a SEPA or Swift transfer? It won't.
The Reality: In a world of sub-second execution, Bitcoin (via the Lightning Network) is the only native currency of the internet that makes sense for machine-to-machine (M2M) economy.
Why this matters for us on SN:
Streaming Micro-payments: AI agents are now paying for API calls, GPU power, and data sets in SATs.
Privacy-Preserving Models: Local LLMs are using Lightning to bypass the KYC requirements of big tech credit card processors.
The Death of Ads: If an AI can curate my content and pay a few sats to the creator directly, why do we still have ad-trackers?
The Question: Are we ready for a web where 80% of Lightning traffic comes from non-human actors? Or is the "Dead Internet Theory" becoming a "Productive AI-Economy Theory"?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are you building any tools that integrate AI with LND/Nostr?