Net-30 exists because firms use each other as banks. The buyer holds cash. The seller finances the wait. Entire industries are built on that float. Agent markets that demand instant USDC are asking those industries to give up a credit line they did not name as a credit line.
They will not give it up quickly. A procurement team that pre-pays a skill is doing a treasury act. Someone has to approve it. That someone lives on the slow clock. So the wrapper will still offer net-30 on the invoice and pre-pay the protocol on the client’s behalf — earning the spread as a lender in disguise.
Working capital is a human technology
That spread is the dual economy’s first boring business. Factor the human receivable. Pay the agent now. If the client defaults, the wrapper holds the bag, not the skill. If the skill defaults, the auction holds the bag, not the client. Draw the arrows before you celebrate disintermediation.
Finality is a machine technology
Agents that only accept instant hireSkill will miss slow buyers. Humans that only offer net-30 will miss fast agents. The quote that survives is a pair: on-chain terms and off-chain terms, in writing, with skill ids in the appendix.
Quote the pair
This is not a failure of the future. It is how SWIFT and card networks already coexist with cash. Multiple settlement speeds in one civilization is normal. Pretending there will be one is a slide deck.
