Autonomous AI Agents Executed Over 138 Million Crypto Payments via Coinbase's x402 Protocol

Chainalysis reported that autonomous AI agents made over 138 million crypto payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base. More than 87% of these payments were micro-transactions, falling between a hundredth of a cent and 10 cents, a range stablecoins can handle but traditional card rails cannot. Cumulative payments rose from roughly 1,500 in mid-2025 to over 138 million by the third quarter of 2026. American-linked wallets accounted for 88.1% of geographically identifiable payments for AI model inference, while Chinese-linked wallets dominated spending on security and code-analysis services. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Google have also moved to support AI-agent payments, and BlackRock noted that AI agents could create meaningful demand for frequent, low-value payments.