Report: AI agents have settled $73 million in transactions over the past year, totaling 176 million transactions.

CoinFeed reported on May 25th, citing Cointelegraph, that crypto investment firm Keyrock released a report stating that AI agents have settled $73 million in 176 million transactions over the past 12 months, demonstrating that machine-to-machine payments have evolved from a concept into a mature ecosystem. The report's authors stated that traditional payment channels cannot serve this market; a fixed processing fee of approximately 30 cents per transaction makes transactions below $1 uneconomical, and stablecoins have almost become the default settlement layer for machine-to-machine transactions. Over 98% of AI agent settlements use Circle's USDC, which is both a validation and a vulnerability, as the entire ecosystem relies on a single stablecoin issuer, posing a systemic risk. By the end of the first quarter, over 104,000 agents were registered in more than 15 directories, with an average transaction size of approximately 31 cents.