AI agents keep coming back for crypto as x402 wallet refill rate surges to 89%

Two-thirds of newly funded x402 wallets made payments within an hour in the third quarter, signaling growing adoption of automated cryptocurrency transactions.The proportion jumped from just 4% a year earlier, according to a new Chainalysis report. The median time between a wallet's initial funding and its first payment also collapsed to 18 minutes from 73 days in late 2025, suggesting software developers are increasingly allocating funds for immediate transactions.The findings mark a shift in the emerging market for machine-to-machine payments, where AI agents can purchase data, computing resources, and digital services using stablecoins. By July, Coinbase's x402 standard on the Base blockchain had processed more than 138 million transactions as technology companies explored ways to monetize automated services.AI agents move beyond experimental paymentsCoinbase developed x402 in 2025, letting software applications pay for online resources directly through web requests and eliminating the need for users to manually authorize each purchase.The technology lets AI agents request information or computing services, receive a payment instruction, and settle the transaction in cryptocurre...