A report from crypto investment firm Keyrock, in collaboration with Coinbase and blockchain Tempo, reveals a new reality: AI agents settled over $73 million across 176 million transactions from May 2024 through April 2025. Keyrock researcher Ben Harvey stated that machine-to-machine payments have evolved from concept to a "developed ecosystem."
By the end of the first quarter, more than 104,000 agents were registered across 15 or more directories. The average transaction size was just 31 cents. Harvey noted that traditional payment rails, with fixed processing fees around 30 cents per transaction, simply cannot handle sub-dollar payments economically. Stablecoins, he argued, won the settlement layer for machine commerce by default.
More than 98% of settlements used Circle's USDC. Harvey called this both a "validation and a vulnerability," warning that the agent economy's dependence on a single stablecoin issuer carries systemic risk.