Morning Minute: Are Humans Ready to Work for Robots?

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall hard overnight; BTC goes sub-$70k
• Fear and Greed back to 14, lowest since November 2025
• The CME reportedly evaluating launching its own CME token
• Fidelity launched its FIDD stablecoin on Ethereum yesterday
• Rainbow Wallet’s RNBW token airdrop goes live today

🤖 AI Agents Are Hiring Humans Now – And They’re Paying in Crypto

For years, everyone’s been asking whether AI would take human jobs.

Turns out it might just work the other way.

📌 What Happened

A crypto developer named Alex from Uma Protocol launched RentAHuman.ai – a platform that lets AI agents outsource real-world tasks to actual people.

It’s effectively a job board where bots find humans to do things software can’t: attend meetings in person, pick up packages, physically sign documents, shake hands, etc.

Humans list themselves as “rentable,” set hourly rates between $50 and $175, and get paid in stablecoins when an AI agent calls them for a task.

The platform uses MCP (Multi-Call Protocol) to let any AI system tap into the human labor pool with a single API call.

The thing took off immediately.

130 signups in the first few hours ballooned to over 50,000 within a day. Demand was so high it crashed the servers on launch, with Alex posting that “Claude is working to bring it back online.”

But Rent A Human was just the beginning.

Yesterday on X Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, shared that he’d already vibe-coded his own AI Agent x Human employment app. On Circle’s Arc testnet.

His prototype includes milestone-based projects, onchain treasuries that escrow funds, AI agents that review work with humans in the loop, and even dispute resolution through a blind jury of evaluators.

All decentralized. All running on USDC.

🧠 Why It Matters

Crypto has been searching for its next killer use case beyond trading and speculation.

Powering the agentic revolution might be it.

Think about why crypto rails make sense here. AI agents don’t have bank accounts. They can’t swipe credit cards. But they can hold wallets.

Stablecoins make instant, borderless payments possible – a bot in San Francisco can pay a human in Manila in seconds.

a16z said similar in their essay from yesterday “AI needs blockchains — especially now”

Existing payment rails can’t handle the volume or granularity of agent-to-agent commerce – micropayments, nanopayments, automated revenue splits. Blockchain infrastructure (L2s, smart contracts, rollups) can.

Crypto makes sense here.

And it’s effectively spawning the next iteration of the gig economy.

Uber transformed mobility by turning every car owner into a potential driver. Airbnb did the same with house owners.

RentAHuman.ai and what Circle is building could do the same for AI, turning every person with a crypto wallet into callable labor for autonomous agents.

We’re still very early, but this could soon balloon to a significant sector of jobs.

If the humans and robots can cooperate…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are very red down 7-10% after a brutal overnight selloff; BTC -8% at $69.6K; ETH -7% at $2,070; SOL -7% at $89.4; XRP -14% at ~$1.36
• MYX (+4%) and LIT (+1%) led top movers
• Bitcoin sank to ~$69,200 overnight Wednesday, extending its weekly losses to 20%; fear & greed at 14, the lowest since late November 2025
• Treasury Secretary Bessent testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday; told Rep. Sherman the government has “absolutely” no plans to bail out Bitcoin or issue a CBDC
• Brock Pierce’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein went far deeper than previously known, with Pierce referenced 1,801 times in the files
• Luke Dashjr called on Adam Back to resign from Blockstream after the files named Epstein as an early investor via Joi Ito’s fund
• Alleged ransom notes for Nancy Guthrie (Savannah Guthrie’s mother) are demanding millions in Bitcoin according to the FBI and Pima County Sheriff investigating
• CME Group is exploring launching its own coin on a decentralized network and moving all crypto products to 24/7 trading in Q
• Fidelity launched its FIDD stablecoin on Ethereum with $59M initial supply, backed by cash and short-term Treasuries, making the $6.8T asset manager the largest TradFi player to issue a stablecoin
• MetaMask integrated Ondo Finance to offer 200+ tokenized U.S. stocks, ETFs, and commodities directly in-wallet

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw $544M in net ouflows on Wednesday, and ETH saw $79M in outflows
• Kyle Samani stepped down from Multicoin Capital

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were mostly flat; DOGE +1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP -1%, FARTCOIN -2%
• BigTrout (+100x to $4M) led onchain movers; WAR (+20%) and SOL (+80%) were other notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Rainbow Wallet’s RNBW token and airdrop expected to go live today, added to Coinbase’s listing roadmap
• Ripple added Hyperliquid to its prime brokerage platform, beating Coinbase
• The Cyberkongz team announced plans for DEATHSTR as newest token works project, will buy from various NFT projects
• Opinion Labs announced completion of a $20M Series A for its prediction market
• Nevada sued Coinbase over its newly launched prediction markets, alleging sports event contracts constitute unlicensed gambling under state law

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly mixed; Punks even at 27 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.1 ETH, BAYC even at 5.36 ETH; Hypurr’s -6% at 487 HYPE
• DX Terminal (+70%) and Good Vibes Club (+7%) led notable movers