GoBTC Pay Powers AI Agent Payments Hackathon with Bitcoin

GoBTC Pay has backed Agnic.AI's Agentic Commerce Pioneers Edition II hackathon as a Diamond Sponsor. The event, which ran from September 10 to 20 and concluded with a hybrid Demo Day in Toronto on September 21, focused on developing AI agents that can pay for goods and services in Bitcoin.

The challenge, known as 'The Shopping Agent Challenge', required teams to build an AI agent capable of buying from almost any merchant. Participants worked from a company-provided case study and were expected to deliver functional prototypes on the GoBTC Pay protocol, not pitch decks.

Roman Yermoshin, General Manager at GoBTC Pay, emphasized that agents need a different payment rail due to their autonomous nature. 'Before long, people will stop placing orders themselves. Their AI agents will take that routine over: the agents will choose the products and pay for the orders on our behalf,' he said.

GoBTC Pay settles transactions directly on the Bitcoin base layer rather than converting to fiat by default. Payers pay no fees, while merchants pay 0.2%, which is split between the wallet provider and the miners processing the settlement.