That's probably their strategy of handling 402 Payment Required[1]. They want to become the platform over which auctions for AI crawlers buying rights to use content take place.
Scary if it works out their way and Cloudflare becomes an even bigger giant.
This reminded me of Gates' "The Road Ahead" book (late 90s if I recall) prediction that marketers would eventually be able to pay a dime to get an email in your inbox, if only the future economy could figure out micro-transactions.
I agree with you that we're moving away from banner ads to some novel way of monetizing traffic, and therefore content published by authentic human beings.
Some the benefit of using stablecoins are 1) they do not need user accounts set up for payments, so easier for machine to machine (AI agent can manage its own money) 2) they work everywhere not just in credit card rich countries 3) security profile is different (no credit card fraud)
Of course Cloudflare is riding the stablecoin hype here a bit. At least they are large enough they might be pull this off
This are zero details on how it's supposed to work, or how it avoids the problem traditional crypto. “Instant global transactions” sound good in theory, but it has never been a technological problem, purely a regulatory one. Govts. don't like this happening. They want oversight, especially for cross border transactions.
regulation from the US side sounds open with the genius act, plus the current admin is pro crypto. Regulations from other govs dont matter as they will just "geo block" countries that dont allow it and users will just bounce into the service with a vpn or proxy at their own risk, other crypto like btc , xrp has been used to cross border trade for a decade now even in countries with outright bans, the entities using it just work around it e.g have an operation in a country were its allowed or in the case of weak enforcement just dont care
Im not fully knowledgeable about banks, but i always thought the reason why regulation was so hard was because no one could agree on a common ground obvs each country wants to keep their moat with their own currency, but with crypto anyone can opt in at their own risk
Every crypto project runs head first into this problem.
Layers and layers of technical bullshit that never addresses the fact that no government in the world wants to allow frictionless peer to peer payments across borders.
CF is likely building this to service an internal need to collect micropayments for some kind of pay to view "captcha", and all the rest is just highly paid PR spin.
Could someone perhaps provide a steelman argument for this? My own personal read on this is really cynical...
As per NIST's recommendations[1] it seems like a blockchain doesn't make sense for this use case.
From where I stand it seems like Cloudflare is side-stepping the scrutiny, regulations and perhaps most pertinently the cost that would govern a similar offering using traditional financial instruments.
Microtransactions are unworkable with traditional financial instruments. Electronic funds transfers and online credit card transfers must (by law) be reversible, and reversibility means cost to the issuer, which means fees for the merchant (in this case Cloudflare). Transactions under a dollar stop making financial sense, god forbid alone anything like a fraction of a cent.
In 2024 Congress signed a law that the transfer of digital assets does NOT count as an electronic funds transfer. This was a huge legislative victory for crypto, which had previously sat in regulatory limbo. The reason why you didn't see anybody using cryptocurrency as, well, currency, and its only use seemed to be as a speculative asset, was because nobody was sure if transferring crypto counted as an EFT, and the CFPB refused to make a decision one way or the other.
Why did Cloudflare choose to use cryptocurrency? They could technically use any digital asset. They could design their own custom digital asset used to facilitate transactions (hell, use Cloudflare stock as the currency), but they would just be reinventing cryptocurrency, but worse, and have to fight an uphill battle to get trust and adoption and risk regulatory scrutiny. A few months ago, Congress signed a law that provided a regulatory framework for stablecoins. These assets are "stable" because they are pegged 1:1 with USDs.
So, stablecoins have emerged in 2025 as the clear winner for microtransactions on marketplaces. No worrying about liability for reversibility. Clear regulatory framework (developing a custom solution risks a CFPB investigation). 1-1 USD backing makes customers trust you more, for good reason. AML checking and sanctions list checking happens at the currency conversion to / from USD, which dramatically simplifies your engineering, latency, and risk requirements.
The only good thing about Blockchain today is Bitcoin's scarcity.
Almost every other project out there would be better off as a centralized project — heck, many of them are centralized, while claiming to hold on to the decentralized cyberpunk ethos — if not being outright scams.
> it seems like a blockchain doesn't make sense for this use case.
given, most traffic will likely be from ai agents, does it make more sense to try to hack agents into using credit cards, having shared social security numbers, opening bank accounts, dealing with chargebacks and slow settlement?
or
does it make sense to use technology that is
- internet native
- programmable
- near instant
- secure
- permissionless
the volatility issues are resolved through the use of stablecoins.
Look what is going on with Google and Android apps.
You let Cloudflare do things like that, and in a few years you will have to register with them using your passport to have the right to browse website. "For your safety".
Cloudflare sits in the middle of a vast amount of web traffic now, offering easy global payments and skimming off the top of that is going to be very profitable potentially.
I don't trust Cloudflare, the larger they get the bigger the abuse potential becomes.
Their customers pay them to be the front door to their websites. Customers want a way to reduce the massive traffic from AI crawling, to block malicious traffic, and to be compensated for access.
That leaves Cloudflare well positioned to implement a pay-for-access check along with all of the existing bot services they offer. AI crawling goes from a threat to a win if I can serve OpenAI a demand to pay for each request. Bot abuse goes down if traffic isn’t free. Businesses like journalism become stable again if readers pay for content rather than relying on advertisers to subsidize it.
Their customers are hit the hardest by the shift away from google search to AI. They probably are the right company to try to help them monetize their content.
I agree this makes little sense for Cloudflare to jump on the crypto bandwagon now. Maybe they want to retain some talent by turning this into an official project.
Is the premise that it makes more sense for an AI agent to pay in prepurchased stablecoin tokens instead of direct access to a credit card?
Good luck with the regulatory process in Europe. Cloudflare is going to have to register as a financial institution. There's no way they will be able to roll this out globally.
Seems like i should be concerned that the company running our edge infastructure decided to expand into crypto...how is this not the signal to jump ship...
I built five different apps that pay-per-use with microtransactions and users were uninterested. The key reason I think is, and something one user stated to me explicitly, is that microtransactions change interactions from a social gratis model to a business transaction.
Grimmer than paying with your soul? With targeting kids with ads for gambling, ultra-rightwing podcssters, and fucked up sexual content? I find it hard to believe.
For those wondering, its a stablecoin. So you put in a dollar, you get back a dollar. This makes sense, especially for Cloudflare. It also makes a lot of sense to a degree, I don't imagine anyone trusting an AI to just hand over stablecoins for transactions.
At least they could've used one of the many existing systems... Brave attention token for example is right there and there's a few other similar projects. They didn't even acknowledge alternative efforts.
ik alot of people on here hate crypto, tether has been making billions each quarter for the last few years. I dont think there's any more real thought to this, than the genius act providing a framework and cf trying to get easy money
The genius act will change how fintech and neobanks operate, so expect to see more companies offering similar services
phartenfeller|4 months ago
Scary if it works out their way and Cloudflare becomes an even bigger giant.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Sta...
nucleative|4 months ago
I agree with you that we're moving away from banner ads to some novel way of monetizing traffic, and therefore content published by authentic human beings.
miohtama|4 months ago
Of course Cloudflare is riding the stablecoin hype here a bit. At least they are large enough they might be pull this off
Orochikaku|4 months ago
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...
jgalt212|4 months ago
As opposed to all the other giants. Clouflare is the only one with the heft to take on Google, AWS, Azure, etc.
NicoJuicy|4 months ago
shubhamjain|4 months ago
dpc_01234|4 months ago
garbthetill|4 months ago
Im not fully knowledgeable about banks, but i always thought the reason why regulation was so hard was because no one could agree on a common ground obvs each country wants to keep their moat with their own currency, but with crypto anyone can opt in at their own risk
thrown-0825-1|4 months ago
Layers and layers of technical bullshit that never addresses the fact that no government in the world wants to allow frictionless peer to peer payments across borders.
CF is likely building this to service an internal need to collect micropayments for some kind of pay to view "captcha", and all the rest is just highly paid PR spin.
slipperybeluga|4 months ago
[deleted]
Orochikaku|4 months ago
As per NIST's recommendations[1] it seems like a blockchain doesn't make sense for this use case.
From where I stand it seems like Cloudflare is side-stepping the scrutiny, regulations and perhaps most pertinently the cost that would govern a similar offering using traditional financial instruments.
[1] https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/enhanced-distribut...
rprend|4 months ago
In 2024 Congress signed a law that the transfer of digital assets does NOT count as an electronic funds transfer. This was a huge legislative victory for crypto, which had previously sat in regulatory limbo. The reason why you didn't see anybody using cryptocurrency as, well, currency, and its only use seemed to be as a speculative asset, was because nobody was sure if transferring crypto counted as an EFT, and the CFPB refused to make a decision one way or the other.
Why did Cloudflare choose to use cryptocurrency? They could technically use any digital asset. They could design their own custom digital asset used to facilitate transactions (hell, use Cloudflare stock as the currency), but they would just be reinventing cryptocurrency, but worse, and have to fight an uphill battle to get trust and adoption and risk regulatory scrutiny. A few months ago, Congress signed a law that provided a regulatory framework for stablecoins. These assets are "stable" because they are pegged 1:1 with USDs.
So, stablecoins have emerged in 2025 as the clear winner for microtransactions on marketplaces. No worrying about liability for reversibility. Clear regulatory framework (developing a custom solution risks a CFPB investigation). 1-1 USD backing makes customers trust you more, for good reason. AML checking and sanctions list checking happens at the currency conversion to / from USD, which dramatically simplifies your engineering, latency, and risk requirements.
factorialboy|4 months ago
Almost every other project out there would be better off as a centralized project — heck, many of them are centralized, while claiming to hold on to the decentralized cyberpunk ethos — if not being outright scams.
paool|4 months ago
given, most traffic will likely be from ai agents, does it make more sense to try to hack agents into using credit cards, having shared social security numbers, opening bank accounts, dealing with chargebacks and slow settlement?
or
does it make sense to use technology that is
- internet native - programmable - near instant - secure - permissionless
the volatility issues are resolved through the use of stablecoins.
greatgib|4 months ago
You let Cloudflare do things like that, and in a few years you will have to register with them using your passport to have the right to browse website. "For your safety".
kvam|4 months ago
noir_lord|4 months ago
Cloudflare sits in the middle of a vast amount of web traffic now, offering easy global payments and skimming off the top of that is going to be very profitable potentially.
I don't trust Cloudflare, the larger they get the bigger the abuse potential becomes.
acdha|4 months ago
That leaves Cloudflare well positioned to implement a pay-for-access check along with all of the existing bot services they offer. AI crawling goes from a threat to a win if I can serve OpenAI a demand to pay for each request. Bot abuse goes down if traffic isn’t free. Businesses like journalism become stable again if readers pay for content rather than relying on advertisers to subsidize it.
Cupprum|4 months ago
But the better question would be, who should be the company (or entity) we should trust to do such a thing?
SXX|4 months ago
unglaublich|4 months ago
miohtama|4 months ago
jbverschoor|4 months ago
thrown-0825-1|4 months ago
h33t-l4x0r|4 months ago
mapmeld|4 months ago
Is the premise that it makes more sense for an AI agent to pay in prepurchased stablecoin tokens instead of direct access to a credit card?
alphabettsy|4 months ago
pelorat|4 months ago
parlortricks|4 months ago
ChrisArchitect|4 months ago
kleene_op|4 months ago
lifty|4 months ago
_jsmh|4 months ago
dist-epoch|4 months ago
andrepd|4 months ago
randerson|4 months ago
vasco|4 months ago
What could go wrong?
giancarlostoro|4 months ago
thrown-0825-1|4 months ago
Until you don't.
There are dozens of examples of failed stable coins, to the point that they are now a meme in the crypto community.
kotaKat|4 months ago
ares623|4 months ago
cluckindan|4 months ago
slipperybeluga|4 months ago
[deleted]
oldpersonintx2|4 months ago
[deleted]
thrown-0825-1|4 months ago
tkel|4 months ago
[deleted]
ares623|4 months ago
deadbabe|4 months ago
Min0taur|4 months ago
viraptor|4 months ago
garbthetill|4 months ago
The genius act will change how fintech and neobanks operate, so expect to see more companies offering similar services
dpc_01234|4 months ago