AI agents make 138 million crypto payments as U.S. dominates spending on AI models
Source: CoinDesk ·
From the source
U.S.-linked wallets account for just over 88% of tracked AI model payments, dwarfing China’s 0.1% share, according to new Chainalysis research. Artificial intelligence (AI) agents are no longer just talking to each other. They are paying for services, buying data and even purchasing access to tokens the AI models, with more than 138 million transactions recorded through the x402 protocol on Coinbase’s Base blockchain, according to a Chainalysis’ Inside North America's $3 trillion crypto economy: Agentic commerce accelerates report . The United States dominates this emerging market. U.S.linked wallets accounted for 88.1% of the geographically identified payments for AI model inference, compared with just 0.1% for Chinese-linked wallets, the blockchain analytics firm found. "One possible explanation is that Chinese developers are more inclined to use open-weight models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, reducing their need to purchase metered inference services," Eric Jardine, Chainalysis'…