- AI agents have processed over 138 million crypto transactions using the x402 protocol on Base.
- S.-linked wallets make up 88.1% of the tracked payments for AI model inference.
- Than 87% of the x402 transactions analyzed fall within the range of $0.0001 to $0.10. Stablecoins are becoming a payment method for autonomous AI agents.
AI agents are starting to use crypto to pay for data, computing power, and access to AI models. According to Chainalysis, U.S.-linked wallets make up 88.1% of all tracked AI inference payments. This shows how quickly the shift is happening in the economy.
LATEST: 🤖 Chainalysis says AI agents have made over 138M x402 transactions on Base, with more than 87% of payments falling between a hundredth of a cent and a dime. https://t.co/C2Mniz2v6d
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) October 15, 2026
These AI agents are no longer just having conversations. They are now doing transactions on their own. Than 138 million transactions have been recorded using the x402 payment protocol on Coinbase’s Base blockchain. This number shows how big the role of cryptocurrency is becoming in automated commerce.
Chainalysis’s report, titled Inside North America’s $3 Trillion Crypto Economy: Agentic Commerce Accelerates, explains that these transactions let AI agents buy services without needing a human to approve every single payment. That means the AI can act fast and make decisions in time.
This points to a kind of market where autonomous software can pay for information computing resources and AI model inference using cryptocurrency. It’s not a future idea. It’s happening now.
U.S. Dominates AI Crypto Payments As China Favors Open-source Models
The United States leads the market for paid AI inference services. U.S.-linked wallets accounted for 88.1% of geographically identified payments, while Chinese-linked wallets represented just 0.1%.
Eric Jardine, Chainalysis’s head of research, suggested that Chinese developers may rely more heavily on open-weight AI models, including DeepSeek and Qwen. These models could reduce the need to purchase metered inference services.
However, Chainalysis cautioned against interpreting the figures as evidence that open-source AI is weakening Asia’s on-chain AI payments market.
China showed a different pattern in security and code-analysis services. Chinese-linked wallets accounted for approximately 90% of geographically identified payments in this category, with much of the activity directed toward AgentLisa, an AI-powered smart contract auditing platform.
Stablecoins Enable Low-cost AI Agent Payments
The x402 protocol, incubated by Coinbase, allows AI agents to make automated crypto payments for digital services.
More than 87% of the analyzed x402 payments ranged from one-hundredth of a cent to 10 cents. Such small transactions can be difficult to process economically through traditional credit card networks.
Stablecoins offer a practical alternative by enabling fast, low-value payments for digital resources. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and other major payments companies have also backed the x402 ecosystem.
AI Crypto Payments Show Signs Of Repeat Usage
Chainalysis found that 89.3% of wallets that received their funding in Q2 2026 got more money within 30 days. That’s higher than the 70.6% of wallets that got their funding in Q3 2025 and then received more funding within the same time frame.
The time it took for a wallet to make its X402 payment after getting funded dropped sharply. It went from 73 days in 2025 down to only 18 minutes in Q3 2026.
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