# RIP free internet *1996-2026* By [Boys Club](https://paragraph.com/@boysclub) · 2026-07-08 --- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/229a4783d180b8242e032a4ec05f7724b891cb7260b5817d9e943c0479cbc284.png) Good morning, Forgive me father for I have sinned (I’ve started posting [face-to-camera videos on AI research](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaAzVoshI9u/)). Pls follow if you’re into this kind of thing! > ![Instagram post](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/418cb118ea60bdc6911802f33ef85ae832102f0f3eab99c807b7c67bf68e7fd1.jpg) Love, [Deana](https://twitter.com/medeana) Editor: [Miranda](https://x.com/mirandamartell) ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/ba4f52508aa42c4da482ca5e5052d1a381f9996b5d07db43567f3524a2be53ab.png) _This edition is brought to you by_ [_Across_](https://across.to/)_. If you have ever moved assets between chains and aged five years waiting for the bridge, Across is the fix. Fast, cheap, and it’s the one we actually use._ ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1b817c4f5a5a7313cf3ee6bdd080c2d3178aaac623cb9f2dfe047bb7d1aae918.png) **The internet is getting a cash register.** Last week Cloudflare opened the waitlist for its [Monetization Gateway](https://blog.cloudflare.com/monetization-gateway/), which lets anyone charge for any web page, dataset, API, or MCP tool sitting behind Cloudflare, with payments settling in stablecoins. > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/skooookum/status/2074259081284538576) When the web's plumbing was written in 1996, engineers reserved an error code, HTTP 402: Payment Required. Then nobody used it for 29 years, because the internet chose a different business model, which is that everything is free, and you pay with your attention. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5fba2a59c04382ff8f339183910dbb946ee28e159e11effd8573473bbd7a611d.png) [if this is your bag, check out this](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/) [article from 2014](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/) on the topic. That model assumed the visitor was a person, but it isn't anymore. [52% of crawler requests on Cloudflare are now AI training traffic, up from 22% in spring 2025](https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-internet-bot-report/). Agents don't watch ads or hold subscriptions, they just consume. So Cloudflare, which sits in front of roughly 20% of the web, is flipping the model. It works like this: an agent requests your page, gets told the price, pays in stablecoins, and gets the page. No signup, no API key, no checkout. > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/2069012774869676072?s=20) Crypto skeptics, hold still for one paragraph, because this is a stablecoin use case that makes sense. These payments would presumably be the micro-est of micro, call it fractions of a cent. They’d be settled in under a second, with no chargebacks and no banking hours. Stablecoins do all of that, and x402 already processed [160 million agentic payments in its first year](https://cryptoadventure.com/cloudflare-launches-monetization-gateway-with-stablecoin-payments-over-x402/). ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/27413997a636bdbafeef78534ec7b48c4fde1abe042a47af1f33b2f36363887a.png) Now much is left to be figured out, like pricing, the user/browser/agent wallet infrastructure and funding mechanism, but the direction is set. The buyer is becoming a bot ([as I’ve been saying](https://x.com/medeana/status/2069167910363562378)). > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/2072512842901893573?s=20) **Quick Hits.** * [Robots are doing customs now.](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319749/20260705/china-deploys-humanoid-robots-vietnam-border-walker-s2-begins-live-customs-work.htm) Humanoid robots are working a China-Vietnam border crossing. Somewhere a TSA agent felt a chill. * Trump's annual disclosure lists [$1.4B of his $2.2B in 2025 income coming from crypto](https://x.com/neilmhta/status/2072379249890079172). Honestly no joke here it’s so grim. * A [yassified gas station](https://x.com/karine_hsu/status/2072784595695890727) went viral last week and as one reply put it, ‘this would work on me.’ * Sotheby's is [auctioning Jensen Huang’s signed leather jacket](https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/the-ceos-uniform-jensen-huangs-tom-ford-leather-jacket/the-jensen-jacket-jensen-huangs-tom-ford-leather) for $40K-$60K, roughly the price of one of his own [Blackwell chips.](https://www.thestandard.com.hk/finance/article/336306/Jensen-Huangs-leather-jacket-up-for-auction-at-Sothebys-for-US60000-at-most-matching-Nvidia-Blackwell-AI-chip-price) * [Brazilian Twitter is arguing](https://x.com/hispano_studies/status/2074142391091548415?s=20) about whether the decline of their football team is paired with the decline of Catholicism in their country. * [This video of Erling Haaland](https://x.com/nocontextfooty/status/2073976649402450218?s=20) has over 23M views and I account for a large percentage of them! ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1966f21a090881b4e615f98e2e4cd22991c86d225d2bca16264a86cae1898ee6.png) > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/metacontrarian/status/2074189555339538731?s=20) > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/EmoPhilips/status/2073929680479203605?s=20) > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/johnpaul_newman/status/2073101867131842940?s=20) > [— # (#) > ](https://twitter.com/sympatheticopp/status/2072348336854872337?s=20) _If you liked this edition, send it to a friend who is thinking about data centers. ILY._ --- *Originally published on [Boys Club](https://paragraph.com/@boysclub/rip-free-internet)*