It's quite a coincidence that both Coinbase and Cloudflare have chosen the ancient but rarely used HTTP status code 402 as the starting point for micropayment processes. The use cases are different: Cloudflare uses it to implement "pay-per-use for AI crawlers," while Coinbase uses crypto or stablecoins for micropayments. You’ve probably encountered a 404 Not Found when visiting websites, right? Well, 402 and 404 are both "response status codes." Actually, 402 was first reserved back in 1997. In the HTTP/1.1 standard, 402 is defined as "Payment Required," with the specific description: "This code is reserved for future use." HTTP/1.1 spec Source: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2068