AI agents made 138 million crypto payments. What did they buy?

More than 138 million x402 payments were recorded on Base in Chainalysis’s 2026 North America study. The count is large; the typical payment is tiny. Some software buys data, code checks and access to AI models, while earlier activity included a speculative token mint that generated transactions without proving a durable service economy. The more revealing figures concern wallets that return, refill and pay named categories of providers. Summary Chainalysis counted more than 138 million x402 transactions on Base by the end of its 2026 reporting period. More than 87% of payments in its extended sample were between $0.0001 and $0.10. Qualifying wallet cohorts refilled within 30 days at rates rising from 70.6% to 89.3%. The median funding to first payment interval fell from 73 days to 18 minutes. U.S. linked wallets made 88.1% of geolocated payments for AI model inference. The October 14 Chainalysis study identifies categories that give the 138 million count an economic context: AI model inference, code analysis, search and data feeds, payments infrastructure, agent tools, gaming and token issuance. It also says the earliest x402 activity included short lived meme coin interest. An on...