One detail in this update deserves a closer look.
Autonomous AI agents have made over 138 million crypto payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base, per Chainalysis, as “agentic commerce” emerges as one of crypto’s fastest-growing use cases. The payments are tiny—87%+ fell between a hundredth of a cent and 10 cents—the kind of micro-transactions stablecoins handle but card rails can’t. That’s the picture from a new Chainalysis report , which found that autonomous AI agents have made more than 138 million cryptocurrency payments through x402, the Coinbase-incubated protocol that lets software pay for online services automatically. Cumulative payments through x402 on Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network, rose from roughly 1,500 in mid-2025 to more than 138 million by the third quarter of 2026, as developers increasingly hand AI agents their own budgets to buy computing power, live web data and coding tools on the fly. BlackRock has flagged autonomous agents as a potential next wave of crypto demand, with the firm’s head of digital assets research, Will Su, telling Chainalysis the company is watching the space closely “with AI agents potentially creating meaningful demand for frequent, low-value payments around the clock.” A note of caution, however, hangs over the numbers.
Autonomous AI agents have made over 138 million crypto payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base, per Chainalysis, as “agentic commerce” emerges as one of crypto’s fastest-growing use cases. The payments are tiny—87%+ fell between a hundredth of a cent and 10 cents—the kind of micro-transactions stablecoins handle but card rails can’t. That’s the picture from a new Chainalysis report , which found that autonomous AI agents have made more than 138 million cryptocurrency payments through x402, the Coinbase-incubated protocol that lets software pay for online services automatically. Cumulative payments through x402 on Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network, rose from roughly 1,500 in mid-2025 to more than 138 million by the third quarter of 2026, as developers increasingly hand AI agents their own budgets to buy computing power, live web data and coding tools on the fly. BlackRock has flagged autonomous agents as a potential next wave of crypto demand, with the firm’s head of digital assets research, Will Su, telling Chainalysis the company is watching the space closely “with AI agents potentially creating meaningful demand for frequent, low-value payments around the clock.” A note of caution, however, hangs over the numbers.