Points of Focus

• Tom Lee sees AI-agent payments becoming crypto’s next breakout within five years.
• Coinbase’s x402 crossed 100 million Base payments in about nine months.
• Chainalysis said memecoin farming drove much of the early surge, limiting the milestone as proof of commercial adoption.

Tom Lee expects autonomous AI agents to become crypto’s next major users within five years, and Coinbase’s x402 data offers an early test of that forecast. 

The protocol crossed 100 million payments on Base, though Chainalysis found that meme coin farming inflated early activity, leaving sustained commercial demand unproven.

Coinbase x402 crosses 100M agentic payments

Armstrong said in a July 26 X post that AI agents will need financial infrastructure built for real-time programmable money and could eventually transact more often than humans. Coinbase launched x402 on May 6, 2025, allowing software to pay for APIs and digital services with stablecoins through the HTTP 402 standard, without bank accounts or manual checkout flows.

Chainalysis also reported on June 3, 2026, that x402-related payments on Base crossed 100 million transactions in about three quarters. Transactions of $1 or more accounted for 95% of transferred value, up from 49% in early 2025. Chainalysis said meme coin farming drove much of the initial surge before activity moderated in early 2026. The figures show that x402 can process activity at scale, but they do not yet establish sustained commercial demand.

LATEST: 🤖 Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says AI agents will drive crypto adoption as agentic payments on Base surpass 100M transactions in about 9 months. pic.twitter.com/QenDPXb9Za

— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) July 27, 2026

Tom Lee links AI-agent payments to crypto breakout

Lee told a July 28 Fundstrat panel that a “highly intelligent payment system” for AI agents could emerge within five years. His argument rests on software needing instant, programmable settlement and micropayments that bank rails weren’t designed to process.

Ethereum contributors have proposed one version of that model. ERC-8183, submitted on February 25, 2026, ERC-8183 outlines an escrow system where a client funds a job, a provider submits the work and an evaluator approves or rejects payment.

Lee also has direct financial exposure to Ethereum’s adoption. He chairs BitMine Immersion Technologies, which reported 5.79 million ETH and $11.8 billion in combined crypto, cash, marketable securities and strategic holdings on July 27. Fundstrat’s event disclosure identified Virtuals Protocol as a client and said the project had commissioned a research project from the firm.

Virtuals co-founder Jansen Teng said its platform had processed about $500 million in agent-to-agent commerce, compared with roughly $15 billion in agent-token trading. Both figures remain company-reported. ERC-8183 also remained at Draft status as of August 3, 2026.