Cloudflare Introduces NET Dollar stable coin

Why Cloudflare for a stablecoin?

• Some see it as a logical extension: Cloudflare already sits in front of huge swaths of web traffic and bots; adding payments lets them charge AI crawlers, enable 402-style “pay for access,” and help customers monetize content hit by the shift from search to AI.
• Others think it’s a late, hype-driven crypto pivot or talent-retention move that doesn’t obviously fit their core business.

Gatekeeper, rent‑seeking, and monopoly concerns

• A recurring fear is that Cloudflare becomes an “internet tax collector”: the chokepoint between AI agents and websites, directly monetizing page views via its own token.
• Commenters worry this creates a single, highly corruptible nexus for governments or investors, worsening centralization and surveillance.
• Some counter that Cloudflare is still smaller than the biggest “big tech” players and is one of the few with enough heft to challenge existing monopolies, though possibly by building one of its own.

Micropayments, AI agents, and business model shifts

• Supporters frame NET Dollar as finally enabling real microtransactions: AI agents or users paying fractions of a cent for API calls, content access, or “pay-to-view captchas,” globally and without card infrastructure.
• Stablecoins are argued to be: internet-native, programmable, instant, and easier for machine-to-machine payments than credit cards.

Stablecoin design, risk, and regulation

• Critics note many “stable” coins have failed; “you put in a dollar, you get back a dollar… until you don’t.” Skepticism extends to how reserves are actually held and the temptation to chase yield.
• There’s debate over AML/sanctions risk: some say stablecoins are now well-regulated (e.g., GENIUS Act) and used by major firms; others stress that crypto rails are a powerful money-laundering and capital-control work-around and will attract intense scrutiny.
• Several argue the real bottleneck in “instant global payments” is political and regulatory, not technical, and that governments won’t accept frictionless, cross-border p2p payments at scale.

User experience and history of micropayments

• Some welcome “pay a few cents instead of ads and tracking,” especially for agents.
• Others cite failed micropayment schemes (telco platforms, AOL, Minitel) and note cognitive burden: turning every interaction into a transaction changes social dynamics and has historically killed adoption.

Alternatives and crypto skepticism

• Questions raised about why Cloudflare didn’t integrate existing tokens (e.g., BAT) or non-blockchain systems.
• Several commenters see blockchain as overkill or mostly suited to Bitcoin-like scarcity, with most other crypto projects called rent-seeking, scams, or regulatory arbitrage.

Overall sentiment

• The thread mixes cautious optimism (“right player to solve AI monetization and micropayments”) with deep distrust (“creeping gatekeeper, money laundering vector, reason to leave Cloudflare”).
• No clear consensus: enthusiasm is mostly around the use case; skepticism centers on power concentration, regulatory backlash, and the track record of both stablecoins and micropayments.