Circle Let 8 AI Agents Bet Real Money on the World Cup With Their Own Wallets - This Isn't Sci-Fi, It's What We're Building
Circle publicly ran an experiment called Steve: 8 autonomous AI agents, each with its own USDC wallet, paid for data on their own via the x402 protocol and placed bets on the 2026 World Cup on Polymarket - with no human reviewing in real time. Writing from the front lines of building agentictrade, the author breaks down why the agent economy matters and why a spending cap is the key design that makes it safe for AI to spend money.