[Digital Today reporter Hyunwoo Choo] Ripple USD is outpacing XRP in payments by autonomous AI agents based on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), an analysis said. U.Today reported on Sept. 26 that XRPL AI Hub data showed AI agents using XRPL infrastructure for 24-hour settlement were increasingly preferring regulated stablecoins in large volumes over the native cryptocurrency.

On-chain payment activity showed Ripple's stablecoin leading both the all-time high for direct clearing payments and the trend over the past 30 days. By contrast, trading volume for XRP, the network’s native cryptocurrency, has stagnated over the past week.

The trend also dovetails with BlackRock’s research note on a “machine-native economy”. BlackRock viewed the existing banking system, which operates around human working hours, as technically struggling to handle millisecond micropayments by autonomous software.

BlackRock pointed out that the global stablecoin market has already exceeded $300 billion and annual transaction volume reaches $11.6 trillion. It then assessed that this asset class has become AI’s basic unit of account. It explained that sufficient circulating liquidity is needed for machine networks to process high-frequency micropayments reliably without friction or system bottlenecks.

Robots need to buy computing power around the clock and pay for API access. For that reason, tokenised GPUs were cited as a core raw material in a new technological order.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (브라이언 암스트롱) saw the number of AI agents executing transactions increasing exponentially. He also noted that such software requires predictable costs because highly volatile assets do not fit strict budget algorithms.

Even a move of a few percent in the XRP price within an hour can shake the financial model of autonomous work. By contrast, Ripple USD, which is pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar, enables algorithms to forecast costs precisely. While XRP maintains its role in interbank settlement, Ripple’s digital dollar is expanding its lead within the robot and software economy inside the XRPL.

The trend shows that cost predictability is emerging as a more important standard than speed in AI agent payments. Even within the XRPL, the internal economy of autonomous software is shifting weight from volatile assets toward dollar-pegged digital assets.