An estimated $390 billion in stablecoin payments took place in 2025, according to McKinsey and Artemis. But inside this market, AI agents are creating an interesting kind of payment activity.

Research shows that agents completed more than 176 million on-chain transactions worth over $73 million between May 2025 and April 2026. But most of them were very small transactions. 

The median x402 payment was between $0.01 and $0.10, while 76% of transactions fell below the $0.30 fixed-fee threshold for card payments. USDC accounted for 98.6% of settlements.

Although the transaction amounts are small, the frequency of AI agentic payments is staggering — 173 million.

Software can buy data, compute and other services hundreds or thousands of times without the human behaviors that define conventional commerce. For example, opening an account, entering card details, approving an invoice or waiting until the next banking day.

XDC Network believes this offers an early glimpse of how more payments could work in future.

“Money has always moved as fast as the slowest part of the process, like a bank, a clearinghouse, or normal business hours,” Atul Khekade, Co-Founder of XDC Network, told BeInCrypto. “Agents just show what happens when you get rid of those delays. Payments stop being something you wait around for and turn into a continuous process happening in the background at the speed of the underlying network.”

Machine Payments

Software can transact continuously. An AI service may need a weather feed for one calculation, a market-price API several seconds later, and compute resources immediately afterward.

Each interaction can carry its own price, turning what might once have been a monthly subscription or invoice into thousands of individual transactions.

That helps explain why Keyrock found activity spread across such a large population of AI agents and service directories. The report found more than 104,000 agents registered across at least 15 directories by the end of the first quarter of 2026.

The economics favor systems that can handle payments measured in cents or fractions of a cent. The payments industry is already preparing:

• Stripe launched the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, in March. The open standard allows agents and services to coordinate micropayments and recurring payments programmatically, with Stripe supporting stablecoins as well as traditional payment methods;
• Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, or AP2, concentrates on proving user authorization and establishing an auditable record of what an agent was permitted to buy. Google transferred the protocol to the FIDO Alliance in April and added support for autonomous “Human Not Present” transactions;
• Cloudflare entered the market in August with Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay, giving agents identities and programmable spending controls. Its payment tools support both x402 and MPP;
• Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines service, announced in June, is designed for continuous, high-frequency and low-value payments, with settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. More than 30 companies, including Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare and Tempo, were named among its initial supporters.

Invisible Settlement

XDC’s contribution to this market is XDCAI.tech, which uses the open x402 protocol originally introduced by Coinbase.

x402 turns the HTTP ‘402 Payment Required’ response into a payment mechanism. An agent requests a resource, receives its price, authorizes the payment, and repeats the request with proof of payment. The process allows software to purchase an API call or another digital service within the same interaction.

Coinbase introduced the protocol in May 2025, and its use has since expanded through integrations with companies including AWS.

XDC AI applies x402 to USDC settlement on XDC Network. Users fund a smart wallet with USDC and establish an on-chain spending limit. An agent can then pay an x402-enabled service per request. EIP-3009 allows the payment to be signed off-chain while a relayer covers the network fee, leaving the agent itself to hold and spend USDC.

The system can also connect to AI applications through MCP or a command-line interface, allowing agents running through products including ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Codex to discover and pay for services.

XDC already had much of the underlying settlement infrastructure in place. Native USDC and Circle’s CCTP went live on XDC in September 2025.

XDC lists two-second block times, six-second finality, and transaction costs around $0.00001, characteristics aimed at high-volume financial applications.

Invoices Could Disappear

Invoices package several functions together. They communicate what is owed, set payment terms, and provide records for reconciliation and accounting. Many businesses then wait days or weeks for the actual transfer to arrive.

Software dealing with software can compress part of that cycle. A service can state its price in a machine-readable format, an authorized agent can evaluate the request, and payment can be settled immediately. Transaction records can then feed directly into treasury and accounting systems.

This comes as agents are taking on increasing responsibility for procurement, cloud spending, portfolio management, and recurring commercial obligations. A company could eventually give an agent a budget and a set of rules, then allow it to buy compute when demand rises, renew services, pay suppliers or rebalance liquidity within those boundaries.

XDC therefore sees today’s one-cent API payment as the smallest version of something much larger.

The card networks see it too. Visa’s stablecoin settlement program reached a $7 billion annualized run rate in April after growing 50% quarter-over-quarter and expanding to nine blockchains. Mastercard announced stablecoin settlement across networks including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Tempo and XRPL in June.

The competition is consequently broader than blockchain networks attempting to replace card companies. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, Cloudflare and blockchain developers are increasingly building interoperable pieces of the same machine-commerce market.

The Other Half of the Problem

Greater autonomy raises questions about permission and accountability.

An agent paying 3 cents per API request incurs limited financial exposure. However, an agent managing a corporate treasury or procurement budget needs controls around authorization, counterparties, limits, and auditability, which is why the major platforms are converging on different pieces of the same problem. This explains why:

• Google has concentrated on cryptographic mandates that record what a user authorized;
• Cloudflare lets owners impose spending caps and approved merchant lists;
• Mastercard’s system combines agent credentials with permissioning rules;
•  XDC AI places spending limits at the wallet level

Those controls determine how quickly agentic payments graduate from micropayments into larger financial relationships.

They also temper the idea that cards and invoices disappear on a fixed timetable. Card networks are already adapting their products for autonomous software, while invoices serve legal, tax, credit and accounting functions that extend beyond transferring funds.

XDC believes that payment and service delivery can happen almost simultaneously: APIs, data, compute, digital services and other machine-to-machine transactions. Success there could establish the habits and technical standards that would later be used for larger transactions.

Khekade expects the terminology itself to disappear as the technology becomes commonplace.

“In 5 years nobody will describe this as agentic payments, the same way nobody today calls a wire transfer an internet payment,” he said. “It will just be how value moves. The interesting question is not whether that happens, it is which networks were actually built for it versus which ones bolted it on afterward.”

The post XDC Says AI Agents Could Upend Invoices and Card Payments appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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One analyst expects Warsh to take a tough line on inflation, but still sees the Fed holding off on rate hikes until at least after the November mid-term elections.

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Ethena (ENA) jumped 11% after its Foundation bought out seed investors who sold after the October 2025 peak. The move capped a near-100% monthly rally as an ENA buyback vote went live.

The token has carried the same weight since launch, with early investor tokens unlocking every month. That supply drip just ended.

Ethena Buys Out Investors Who Sold After the Peak

The Ethena Foundation announced the deal Thursday, indicating that they spent the past two weeks buying locked tokens directly from early backers. Each was originally allocated more than 0.25% of ENA supply.

The Foundation split those backers into two groups:

• Investors who sold any ENA after the October 10, 2025, peak had their locked tokens bought out.

Only one wallet said no.

• Investors who never sold got a full-price offer.

None accepted.

“As a result, the investors who have been selling into the market during the relevant time frame now hold no unvested ENA which could be sold into the market in the future,” the Foundation wrote in its blog.

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The rest of the investor calendar now ends early. All remaining investor tokens unlock on October 5, 2026, and the monthly calendar disappears. Team tokens stay locked on their original schedules. Roughly 12% of supply stays locked, all of it team, ecosystem, and Foundation holdings.

The pressure this fixes was real. Ethena released 171.88 million tokens in early August alone. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought 9.05 million ENA days before that release.

One large holder sits outside the deal. StablecoinX, an ENA treasury company, still holds about 20% of supply under a separate lockup disclosed in SEC filings.

ENA Buyback Vote Ties the Fee Switch to USDe Growth

The fee switch is the second piece. A Snapshot governance vote, open through September 2, would send protocol revenue into ENA purchases. Ethena’s Risk Committee has already approved the design.

There is a catch. Buybacks only start once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. At that level, 5% of protocol revenue buys ENA. The share scales up to 20% if supply reaches $20 billion.

USDe sits near $4.6 billion today, down from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion. So the switch stays off until supply climbs roughly $3 billion. The Foundation says it wants USDe above $100 billion within five years.

Once that first threshold hits, 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation funds the purchases. Each buy will be tracked on Ethena’s public dashboard.

The playbook has precedent. Uniswap’s fee switch proposal sent UNI to a two-month high last November.

Ethena also addressed a second old doubt. A Master Framework Agreement, due in October, hands protocol intellectual property and residual value to tokenholders. Ethena Labs equity investors get neither. The Foundation says Labs equity has never taken a dollar of protocol revenue.

Will the ENA Rally Hold?

ENA trades near $0.155 after gaining 11% in 24 hours. The token is up 56.5% in a week and 84.6% over the past 30 days. Its market cap stands near $1.52 billion.

The bull case is simple. The sellers are gone, the unlock calendar dies in October, and a buyback pipeline is on the ballot. The bear case is just as clean. Buybacks stay off until USDe nearly doubles, and StablecoinX’s 20% stake sits outside the deal.

The Snapshot vote still needs quorum. From there, the signal to watch is USDe supply. Every dollar it climbs brings the ENA buyback switch closer.

The post Ethena Just Paid Its Early Investors to Exit as ENA Nears 100% Rally appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Prosecutors are probing allegations that Zondacrypto’s CEO gave Radosław Piesiewicz a 40,000 euro watch for help with regulatory hurdles.

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The token hit a $25 million market cap on the back of nine days of unreleased Grand Theft Auto VI footage. Its creator has now sold his stack — hours before Rockstar’s first official gameplay reveal.

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Ethereum’s sharp breakout has significantly improved its market structure, with strong momentum carrying the price toward the $2.5K region. While bullish continuation remains possible, the increasingly extended move leaves ETH vulnerable to a temporary pullback or sideways consolidation if supply begins to increase.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, Ethereum has decisively broken out of its prolonged bearish structure. The impulsive rally from the $1.85K-$1.92K demand zone pushed the price through the descending trendline, the major moving averages, and the $2.07K-$2.15K resistance zone with considerable strength.

ETH is now trading around $2.5K and testing the major $2.4K-$2.5K resistance zone. Momentum remains firmly bullish, supporting the possibility of continuation if buyers can absorb the available supply around this area.

However, the RSI has recently entered overbought territory following the vertical advance. This does not necessarily signal an immediate reversal, but it does indicate that the market is becoming increasingly extended. If supply increases around $2.5K, ETH could enter a period of sideways consolidation or begin a corrective pullback before attempting another leg higher.

The $2.07K-$2.15K zone represents an important support area in the event of a deeper correction, while the former $1.85K-$1.92K consolidation range remains the broader structural support.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart highlights the strength of the recent expansion more clearly. Ethereum surged almost vertically from around $1.9K and has since begun consolidating inside the $2.43K-$2.51K resistance zone.

Despite the lack of immediate follow-through above $2.5K, the short-term structure remains bullish. A decisive breakout and acceptance above the $2.51K region could indicate that buyers remain in control and open the door to further upside.

Nevertheless, after such an aggressive rally, a retracement would be technically reasonable. The first notable pullback target is the $2.22K-$2.31K zone. If selling pressure becomes more substantial, the second support region around $2.07K-$2.12K could become relevant.

Therefore, the primary scenario remains a bullish continuation based on the strength of momentum. Yet, increasing supply around the current resistance could first produce either a temporary correction toward these pullback zones or a sideways consolidation phase that allows the market to cool down.

Sentiment Analysis

The liquidation data adds another reason to expect potentially choppy price action in the short term. Liquidity is present on both sides of Ethereum’s current price, indicating that neither buyers nor sellers have established complete control.

This balanced positioning increases the possibility of sideways consolidation accompanied by liquidity sweeps in both directions. Price could temporarily move above or below the developing range to clear leveraged positions before establishing its next sustained trend.

Combined with the technical picture, this suggests that ETH’s broader momentum remains favorable for bullish continuation, but the path higher may not be straightforward. A period of consolidation or a temporary pullback could occur first as the market absorbs supply following the recent impulsive rally.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: After a 35% Rally, Is ETH Ready for Another Leg Higher? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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The self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer has posted a solid 20% increase over the past two weeks, briefly hitting a three-month high.

As expected, the comeback fired up the SHIB Army, and now some might expect another wave of gains in the near term. We decided to ask three of the most popular AI-powered chatbots whether a more substantial rally is coming and what the chances are that the price will erase a zero during this quarter.

It is Possible

As of press time, SHIB trades near $0.0000053 (per CoinGecko), and ChatGPT estimated that it will require an approximately 90% pump to remove a zero and reach $0.00001. OpenAI’s platform claimed this remains plausible in Q3 but will depend on numerous vital factors.

The first is breaking the key $0.000006 level, which could lead to substantially higher trading volume and FOMO among market participants.

Next on the list is a potentially broader meme coin rotation, with capital moving from Bitcoin and major altcoins toward the depicted niche. Last but not least, ChatGPT paid attention to whale activity, noting that the return of big investors could positively impact the price.

In fact, the exact same thing happened a month ago when SHIB experienced a double-digit jump on a daily scale after a certain whale resumed purchasing after months of inactivity.

Another element often cited as bullish for the price is a potential resurgence of Shiba Inu’s burning mechanism. However, ChatGPT suggested that token burns are unlikely to make any difference, noting that the rate has declined by almost 60% over the past month.

Google’s Gemini said erasing a zero without massive capital inflows or a supply shock would require strong, sustained momentum. It predicted that further advancement of Shiba Inu’s layer-2 scaling solution, Shibarium, could be among the catalysts pushing SHIB’s price north this quarter.

Nonetheless, the protocol is far from its glory days, processing mere hundreds or thousands of transactions on a daily scale. Years ago, the figure was in the millions.

Extraordinary Unlikely

Peerplexity was the most pessimistic among those we consulted. It said such a rally is mathematically possible but extremely implausible given the low interest in SHIB.

It claimed that the ceiling for Q3 lies in the $0.0000067-$0.0000078 range, adding that failing to hold the $0.000005 line could actually result in a major collapse.

The post Can Shiba Inu (SHIB) Erase a Zero in Q3: 3 AIs Give Their Take appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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