An analysis said AI agents have made cryptocurrency payments totaling $73 million over the past year, moving beyond the concept stage into a real ecosystem.

On May 25, blockchain media outlet Cointelegraph reported that crypto investment firm Keyrock said AI agents settled $73 million through 176 million transactions from May last year to April 2026.

In a report released with Coinbase and Blockchain Tempo, Keyrock said machine-to-machine payments have developed over the past 12 months from a concept into a built ecosystem. Ben Harvey (벤 하비), a researcher at Keyrock, said AI agents settled more than $73 million and incumbent operators pursued acquisitions worth more than $8 billion to secure positions in the new payment structure.

Stablecoins have emerged in the process as the base settlement layer for AI agents. As of the end of the first quarter, more than 104,000 AI agents were registered in more than 15 directories and registries, and the average transaction amount was 31 cents.

The scale of such transactions also exposed the limits of traditional payment networks. Under a structure that adds a fixed processing fee of about 30 cents per transaction, payments below $1 lose economic viability. Harvey explained that an agent paying 3 cents for a weather API call cannot use the Visa network.

AI agents are also being used to build Web3 applications, issue tokens, and enable autonomous interaction among services and protocols. Some platforms are also testing the use of AI in trading. In a survey of 2,632 cryptocurrency users by CoinGecko in April last year, 87 percent said they would be willing to let AI agents manage at least 10 percent of their cryptocurrency portfolios.

However, the concentration of settlement infrastructure in a specific stablecoin was cited as a risk factor. More than 98 percent of AI agent settlement was made in Circle's USDC. Harvey warned that the entire ecosystem depends on one company and that if Circle faces regulatory issues, a depegging or a long-term service disruption, there would be no alternative route for the agent economy.