AI agents are beginning to earn Bitcoin on Stacks as autonomous programs trade, run services, and transact on-chain without human input

Stacks, a leading Bitcoin Layer 2 smart contract network, is highlighting the emergence of autonomous AI agents that are beginning to earn and transact Bitcoin (BTC) directly on-chain via its infrastructure. According to analytics platform Tenero, Stacks currently concentrates the majority of AI agent economic activity on Bitcoin layers, with agents programmatically trading, running services, and settling payments in BTC without ongoing human intervention. This is enabled by Stacks’ Clarity smart contracts, which allow agents to hold and move Bitcoin-linked assets while remaining anchored to Bitcoin’s security model. Tenero’s April 2026 research describes a “new category of economic participant”: AI agents that earn, spend, and allocate Bitcoin through smart contracts, forming early “agent economies” on Stacks. In controlled experiments cited in the report, 48.3% of tested AI models chose Bitcoin as their preferred transaction currency and 79.1% selected it for long‑term value storage, ahead of stablecoins and fiat. These preferences are reflected on-chain: autonomous agent activity on Stacks reportedly grew from 105 to 766 active agents week over week, with agents transacting hundreds of thousands of satoshis and submitting thousands of on-chain messages and check-ins. One widely cited example is an AI agent known as “Tiny Marten”, which operates on Stacks to earn BTC by running a bounty board and selling data queries priced in satoshis, all executed autonomously. Proponents frame this as an early instance of an “agentic economy,” where AI systems become routine economic actors—paying for data, earning fees for services, and reallocating capital on-chain—potentially making Bitcoin and Bitcoin L2s like Stacks key infrastructure for machine-to-machine commerce.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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