The three main themes of agent commerce, stablecoins, and tokenization are reshaping the global crypto market.

Written by: Chainalysis

Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News

The data research organization in the cryptocurrency field, Chainalysis, has released the latest edition of the Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Report. The North America section of the report mentions that the North American crypto economy has reached $3 trillion, making it the most influential region globally. The three crypto-related industries incubated in the United States, including agent commerce, the export of dollar stablecoins, and asset tokenization, are shaping the global cryptocurrency market. During the 2026 statistical period, the scale of the US crypto economy contracted by 2.2%, aligning with bearish market expectations; meanwhile, Canada saw counter-cyclical growth, increasing by 2.3%. Below is the Chinese translation of the North America section of the report:

As of July 1, 2026, within a 12-month statistical period, North America is the region with the greatest influence on the global cryptocurrency market. The deep investor base in the United States provides capital, legislative bodies continuously update regulatory rules, stablecoins serve as settlement currencies, and various enterprises continuously push crypto assets closer to traditional finance. Every move in the North American crypto industry radiates influences worldwide. In fact, the United States and Canada rank among the top in Chainalysis' "Large Fund Index".

In this period, the combined scale of the two countries' crypto economies reached $3.02 trillion, a slight decline of 1.9% from the previous period. The overall contraction in the region is primarily driven by the downturn in the US market. The scale of the US crypto economy is $2.78 trillion, a quarter-over-quarter decline of 2.2%, which is expected in a deep bear market. Even so, this largest single crypto economy globally has managed to retain the market size accumulated during an almost doubling growth in 2025. Institutional factors such as the implementation of crypto ETFs, acceleration of tokenization, and widespread use of stablecoins have helped the market maintain its growth achievements.

Hoolie Tejwani, director of Coinbase Ventures, stated: "Compared to 2025, the current industry shows more signs of maturity. The foundational infrastructure built in 2025 has transformed into products with real users, liquidity, and trading markets in 2026."

This chapter will focus on three crypto products that have been incubated in the United States and are gaining popularity domestically and internationally: AI agent commerce, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. Each reflects the influence of the United States on the global crypto market. The article will also analyze the Canadian market. Although its scale is far smaller than its neighbor, Canada defies the downward trend, with the crypto economy growing by 2.3%.

The US Leads On-Chain AI Economy

The United States' competitive advantage in the global AI race is permeating various sectors of the economy, including the crypto industry. We focus on the x402 protocol — a mainstream digital payment channel that allows AI agents to automatically spend funds, observing the development of this emerging economic shape.

Automation software can already complete payments on-chain, and the United States is the main research and development hub for such technologies. USDC issuer Circle, and Coinbase, creators of the x402 system, are helping the rise of the AI agent payment ecosystem. During the writing of this report, we conducted interviews with both companies. Agent commerce has also caught the attention of major financial institutions in the United States. Will Su, BlackRock's head of digital assets research, stated that institutions are closely watching agent commerce, "AI agents could create strong demand for real-time high-frequency micro-payments."

As of the end of the 2026 statistical period, more than 138 million x402 transactions have been completed on the Base chain, which is currently the most mainstream blockchain for agent commerce.

On-chain payments can facilitate economic activities unsupported by traditional payment channels; micro-payments are a typical example. Transactions under $1 are not economically viable for credit card networks. However, stablecoin settlement costs can be under one cent, making it feasible for agents to pay small amounts. This opened up a new on-demand payment market, for example, for data accessed through APIs.

Circle described a clear division forming, "User-initiated agent payments can rely on card organization payment channels; machine-to-machine micro-settlements use stablecoin channels, as such transaction amounts are too small for credit card systems to profit."

During a 16-month observation period ending in September 2026 (we extended the observation window due to the new technology), the vast majority of x402 transactions were micro-payments. Over 87% of payment amounts were between $0.01 and $0.10, with the most common transaction amount being between $0.01 and $0.10.

Several interviewed experts indicated that agent commerce is still in the "experimental stage," but signs of industry maturity are already evident. In the early stages of x402, most transactions were one-time user experience products that ceased to be used once the funds were exhausted. However, this is changing.

AI Payment User Retention Continues to Improve

The user stickiness for new wallets has always been higher than for early wallets. Grouped by quarter of first deposit: wallets that made their first deposits in Q3 2025 had a second deposit rate of 70.6% within 30 days after the first deposit; while for new wallets in Q2 2026, this rate rose to 89.3%. Continuing to deposit after wallet balances are exhausted is like resubscribing to a service after receiving the first bill. The statistics only include wallets that initiated on-chain payments on at least two different dates, excluding one-time experience users. This data illustrates that users are gradually realizing the real value of x402 and are willing to continue depositing after their funds are depleted.

x402 users' intent is also becoming stronger, as reflected in the decreasing time interval between the first deposit in the wallet and the first x402 payment. At the end of 2025, when the protocol was just launched, the median interval from wallet creation to initiating the first x402 payment was 73 days; by Q3 2026, this interval shrank to just 18 minutes. The significant reduction in time suggests that new wallets are specifically created for agent commerce and x402 payment scenarios.

Since the launch of the x402 protocol, the proportion of wallets initiating payments within one hour of depositing has consistently increased. In Q3 2025, only 4% of wallets completed their first payment within an hour of depositing; by Q3 2026, that percentage soared to 67%. This means that nearly two-thirds of new wallets initiate payments almost immediately after recharging. This is a strong signal of purpose: users are not depositing to simply store assets or to test the protocol but have real needs that require immediate circulation of funds.

What Are AI Agents Buying Through x402?

Tejwani from Coinbase Ventures remarked: "AI agents are becoming economic entities; each agent is essentially a new 'user' of blockchain. We are particularly optimistic about projects developed based on the x402 protocol incubated by Coinbase and the significance of this standard for open-source protocols and native internet payments."

Based on smart payment data, we raise the question: What are AI models actually purchasing on-chain? In the early stages of x402, transactions were mostly driven by hype, with MEME coins attracting many new wallets, but interest waned quickly. As x402 matures, more sustainable agent commerce scenarios are emerging, with information services being particularly prominent, as AI bots purchase AI-generated information services on-chain.

We traced millions of transactions from AI wallets flowing into information service sectors like code review, financial intelligence, data, and search APIs. This aligns with the characteristics of agents: they require large amounts of machine-readable data, and on-chain micro-payments are perfectly suited for these scenarios.

AI agents are also using this payment channel to purchase gaming services, token issuance, gambling services, and frameworks and development tools for agents. Notably, AI agents will even pay for other AI agents. One of the largest categories of x402 transactions is the computational power for model inference.

The US Dominates On-Chain AI Commercial Activities

In traceable x402 smart service transactions, the volume of AI agent transactions in the United States surpasses that of all other countries, accounting for 30%.

In all traceable AI model inference transactions under this protocol, US wallets represent 88.1%; payments for agent frameworks and tools account for 41.8%; payments for data and search APIs account for 23.2%. These three categories are core foundational resources for building AI agent software.

By comparison, wallets attributed to China have the highest transaction share in the security field. Among the tracked "Security and Code Audit" transactions, 90% come from wallets associated with China, almost entirely directed towards AgentLISA — a service that audits Solidity smart contracts using large models. Chinese-related wallets account for 46.7% of market and financial intelligence transactions, with 35% going to payment settlement transactions. However, in terms of paid model inference, Chinese AI agents only account for 0.1%. Chinese operators rarely purchase inference power.

A reasonable explanation is local preferences for AI. The Chinese market more readily adopts locally developed large models such as DeepSeek and Tongyi Qianwen, while the US market is different. This local preference, coupled with economic realities, means that most open-weight models in China are freely available, whereas American models like ChatGPT and Claude operate on a pay-per-use basis.

This implies that the explicit market for machines purchasing computational power and information will be larger in regions where pay-per-use is more cost-effective. Currently, demand in the US is at the center of the market. The end of the experimental phase is happening faster than many observers had expected. The data intervals for budget renewals and the time from recharge to consumption indicate that this system now has a continuous budget and is no longer just a demonstration.

The monitoring logic for these transactions is completely different from traditional payments. Single transactions are extremely fast, with very small amounts and extremely high frequency, making it impractical to conduct compliance checks for each one. However, this new model has different risk control measures: recharge behaviors can locate the source of fund transfer; budget authorization undergoes manual review; receiving services are known trading counterparts; agent expenditures show fixed patterns, making behavioral anomalies easier to identify than human payments. Compliance logic shifts from transaction-by-transaction screening to pre-check deployment settings, known counterparties, and transaction behavior patterns.

The responsible parties must be the individuals deploying and funding the agents, not the agents themselves. Recharge behaviors, transaction counterparts, and behavior patterns serve as three verifiable nodes that can adapt to machine-level rapid transactions; transaction-by-transaction reviews are impossible. A regulatory framework that fails to understand this logic will either completely block agent commerce or entirely miss out on such transactions.

The US Imports Digital Gold and Exports Digital Dollars

In mid-2025, the US Congress passed the GENIUS Act, formally confirming a fact already recognized by the global crypto market: the United States is the foremost exporter of digital dollars. Stablecoins enable US debt to become the preferred currency for peer-to-peer transactions and cross-border corporate activities. In the 2026 cycle, stablecoins continue to land in various overseas new scenarios, generating billions of dollars in economic activities for US enterprises and the US government.

While the US exports stablecoins, it is also importing Bitcoin. Since the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the US market's share of global Bitcoin transactions has steadily increased. In total US crypto transactions, the share of stablecoins is lower than in other parts of the world, and the gap continues to widen. The following chart consolidates three indicators (the share of Bitcoin in serving capital inflows, exchange trading, and net capital inflows across borders) to form an index. The focus is not on the index value but on the gap between the two curves. This divergence reflects the growing dominance of the US market regarding Bitcoin, whereas other regions increasingly rely on dollar stablecoins.

Dollar stablecoins allow users to hold dollars without opening a US bank account. US residents already own dollar bank accounts, while overseas users utilize digital dollars to meet demands that local banks cannot address. Simultaneously, Americans are increasingly viewing Bitcoin as a scarce value-preserving asset. Will Su, managing director of digital assets research at BlackRock, stated: "The demand for investors to treat Bitcoin as a currency substitute remains strong, particularly against the backdrop of soaring global government debt and fiscal expenditures."

Statistics show that in 2026, the US became a net importer of Bitcoin for the first time since 2022. Transfers below $10,000 have consistently shown net outflows in each statistical cycle; large transfers, conversely, have been net inflows. In the $10 million and above bracket alone, 53,200 Bitcoins flowed into the US. Retail investors transfer Bitcoin out, while institutions continue to buy. Even without a clear buying plan, the expectation of federal strategic Bitcoin reserves brings implicit sovereign buying power to the private market.

In order book trading, 99.1% of stablecoin transactions are anchored to the dollar. These tokens are issued by US issuers, bypassing intermediary banks and not included in traditional payment statistics, with funds flowing back just the same. Each stablecoin corresponds to reserve assets primarily composed of short-term US Treasury bonds. Circle disclosed that at the end of the quarter, the USDC circulating supply reached $73.3 billion, a year-over-year increase of 19%, with just that quarter's on-chain transaction scale reaching $14.8 trillion. Circle stated: "More and more institutions are viewing stablecoins as the routing layer for fiat money, domestic stablecoins, and global dollar liquidity. It is used to transfer positions between different assets, jurisdictions, and trading platforms, with the positions themselves not being the core concern."

Both trends are favorable for the US market. The Bitcoin that flows in is hoarded for the long term; while the stablecoins exported promote the dollar system, bolstering US economic strength.

However, the sustainability of the two is different. Accumulating Bitcoin belongs to institutional asset allocation decisions, which can change with market preferences. Will Su of BlackRock explained: "In the first half of 2026, capital flowed out of digital assets into AI sectors, with crypto ETPs experiencing fund redemptions; as enthusiasm for AI investments cools, funds will flow back in the third quarter." In contrast, the adoption of stablecoins is broad and gradual, and once users adopt digital dollars, it is difficult to abandon.

Order book data indicates that any competing stablecoin aiming to replace dollar stablecoins faces significant challenges. Notably, even though the EU's MiCA act creates a friendly environment for issuing euro stablecoins, order book trading volumes of euro-pegged stablecoins represent only 0.45%. Naturally, competitors are entering: Singapore and Hong Kong have both launched stablecoin licensing frameworks to support the issuance of local stablecoins. However, they face the same dilemma: regulatory frameworks are already in place, but market user demand has not kept up.

Tokenization Sector: The US Continues to Lead

During the 2026 statistical cycle, the US continues to dominate the rapidly growing tokenization sector. The US Treasury is the largest real-world asset (RWA), with an on-chain scale of $15.42 billion, accounting for 42.8% of the total value of all tokenized RWAs. In Q2 2026, the total global tokenized RWA scale reached $36.07 billion, with a quarter-over-quarter growth of 135%.

Tom Murphy, director at Securitize, remarked: "Asset managers are gradually issuing tokenized funds, publicly traded companies exploring on-chain equity, and financial institutions building stablecoin infrastructures, allowing tokenized assets to slowly be used for lending, collateral, and trading markets."

As the usability of tokenized assets on-chain increases, the types of tokenized subjects continue to expand. The scale of corporate credit tokens grew by 3156%, while private equity tokens grew by 1340%, yet these categories start from a low base, increasing from tens of millions to billions of dollars. Tokenized US Treasury bonds grew by 125%, from $6.86 billion to $15.42 billion, surpassing the total scale of the latter three asset types combined. Market diversification is based on US Treasury assets and not separate from them.

US holders account for 11.7% of global tokenized RWA holders and 11.4% of the holding value, with the two numbers largely matching. However, the tokenization of US Treasury bonds disrupts this balance. In terms of asset value: Italy holds 29.9% of traceable tokenized US Treasury bonds, Portugal holds 18.8%, Singapore holds 18.2%, while the US ranks fourth with 10.5%. When ranked by the number of wallet addresses holding tokens, the figures are completely different: while Japanese holders account for 16.4% of the total number, their asset value stands at only 0.4%. This significant misalignment between quantity and value indicates that a small number of large overseas holders dominate the tokenized US Treasury market, while more retail investors hold only small positions.

Morva Rohani, from the Canadian Web3 Council, pointed out that the logic underpinning tokenized US Treasury bonds also applies: overseas investors purchasing tokenized US Treasury products will create demand for US Treasury bonds, crowding out potential demands for local sovereign debt. Tokenization lowers the minimum investment threshold, allowing regular retail investors from Lisbon and Singapore to directly purchase these large financial products without needing to open a US securities account.

Lending data further confirms that tokenized US Treasury bonds are mainly held rather than used as collateral. In this period, the number of wallets used for private credit collateral grew by 1618%, with private credit currently accounting for 77% of the total collateral scale for tokenized RWAs; commodity lending grew by 875%. Conversely, the collateralized lending scale for US Treasury bonds has declined by 23%, marking it as the only shrinking category. This suggests that non-tokenized private credit lacks liquidity, while after tokenization, it can serve as collateral, raising its value. US Treasury bonds are already the highest quality collateral in traditional finance, and holders have established channels for obtaining funds.

Securitize's understanding of the industry's future is: "In the long run, investors will not care whether they are 'using cryptocurrencies,' but will be concerned whether financial assets can enjoy the speed, programmability, and global interoperability brought by blockchain infrastructure."

"The ultimate form is not a separate crypto financial system parallel to traditional finance, but rather the same financial system adopting more advanced technologies." This integration encompasses more than just the public chain data covered in this article. On authorized chain infrastructures such as Canton, a parallel institutional tokenization layer is being built, where regulated entities settle token securities and cash within compliance and custodial frameworks. Such activities will not be counted in public chain wallet address statistics, but they indicate that the complete tokenization market is far larger than any single dataset can capture.

Canada: A Benchmark for Global Peer-to-Peer Crypto Economy

Canada ranks second in the "Large Fund Index" and tenth in the grassroots adoption index globally. In the statistical period from July 2025 to June 2026, the Canadian crypto economy grew by 2.3%, reaching a total scale of $247.7 billion.

Behind this growth is the incorporation of cryptocurrency into daily life by residents, with its adoption considerably exceeding that of other developed economies. In fact, among the G7 countries, Canada boasts the strongest peer-to-peer crypto economy, ranking seventh worldwide for both domestic and cross-border capital flows.

Stablecoins are the primary target of crypto demand in Canada. As of June 2026, stablecoins accounted for 44% of Canadian dollar-denominated order book trading volume, up from 30% a year earlier; USDC is by far the dominant stablecoin, while Canadian dollar stablecoin trading volume remains very low.

This purchasing structure presents certain policy challenges. The most popular crypto asset in the Canadian market is effectively the dollar stablecoin, which is classified as an overseas asset. Morva Rohani, executive director of the Canadian Web3 Council, noted that, similar to the logic concerning tokenized US Treasury bonds, purchasing US dollar stablecoins will create demand for US Treasury bonds, thereby crowding out domestic bond demand.

"Canadian policymakers are closely tracking this trend," she stated.

Being adjacent to the US makes this issue more pronounced for Canada, but it is a global phenomenon. The flow of funds into dollar-backed stablecoins instead of local debt-backed alternatives will weaken demand for domestic sovereign bonds. The global strength of the dollar amplifies this effect, but the risks are real. Canada is not the only country looking to diminish the dominance of dollar transactions using stablecoins.

Recently, Canada passed the "Stablecoin Act," clearing legal obstacles for the issuance of Canadian dollar stablecoins. Rohani mentioned that some potential issuers are targeting domestic and cross-border payment scenarios. However, the current market cap and user base of Canadian dollar stablecoins are negligible compared to those of dollar stablecoins.

Canada's Cross-Border Crypto Economy

In Chainalysis's unweighted large fund index, Canada ranks first globally for cross-border capital flows, and seventh for grassroots adoption index.

The impressive cross-border payment performance in Canada is likely due to its large immigrant population. Rohani commented: "23% of Canada's population is foreign-born, making it the G7 country with the highest immigrant proportion." She believes that the sizable immigrant population is the core driving force behind remittance demand, which will be illustrated in the following sections about how this group propels a robust peer-to-peer economy.

"Remittance channels to India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China are highly utilized."

We selected the three fastest-growing cross-border destinations: India, China, and the Philippines. Together, they accounted for 19.4% of the total outflow of stablecoins from Canada, up from just 10.9% in the same period last year.

In this cycle, the scale of stablecoin and Bitcoin transfers from Canada to India, the Philippines, and China reached $2.36 billion, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 141%. The total number of transactions was 3.56 million, with an average of 75,100 unique senders each month during the observation period, and an average transfer amount of $663.

Prior to the advent of cryptocurrencies, these remittance channels were already substantial. In 2024, the global total remittance volume was approximately $905 billion, with Canada’s main receiving countries consistently ranking high: India at the top with about $129 billion, followed by China with about $48 billion, and the Philippines with around $40 billion. In 2023, the total cross-border remittance volume from Canada was about $8.3 billion, with a large portion directed towards these three countries. In comparison, while the $2.36 billion flowing through crypto channels is not massive, its growth rate is extremely rapid.

Cost is a core driver of this growth. The World Bank indicates that the average cost of cross-border remittances from Canada is close to 6.7%, with bank channels exceeding 7%. Stablecoin transfers incur settlement costs of less than one cent, regardless of the amount. For individuals who have been remitting across borders for years, the long-term savings in costs can be substantial.

Supporting the Local Trading Population in Canada

Globally, peer-to-peer crypto payments are ideally suited for immigrant populations. They may find it difficult to open traditional bank accounts, which creates a need for feasible alternatives, making these populations more inclined to utilize cryptocurrency in everyday economic activities.

Changes in the size of this demographic are highly correlated with trends in Canadian P2P crypto trading volumes. For example, we tracked the number of study visa holders from China, India, and the Philippines (these three countries are also key remittance destinations for Canada) since mid-2021. As this group’s numbers increased, Canadian local peer-to-peer crypto trading volumes rose in tandem; when policies tightened, leading to a decrease in visa issuance and holder numbers, P2P activity correspondingly shrank.

The data reflects this correlation. Since mid-2021, Canadian P2P crypto trading volumes have fluctuated in sync with the number of temporary visa holders. While these two are merely correlated and do not prove causation, the direction of their fluctuations aligns closely. A straightforward explanation exists: once individuals with cross-border funding needs encounter low-cost settlement tools, they will opt to use them.

While this evidence demonstrates correlation, the concurrent rise and fall of local P2P trading volumes with the temporary visa population provides strong directional insight. Numerous cases support that Canadians are increasingly using cryptocurrencies in daily life: landlords accepting Bitcoin for rent, residents paying bills with crypto, and many small to medium enterprises accepting cryptocurrency for selling goods.

Infrastructure in the US, Users Distributed Globally

The core of the North American crypto story during this period lies not in who holds crypto assets but in who builds the underlying channels upon which global users rely. American institutions, issuers, and developers are at the center of these three overlapping market chains: tokenized US Treasury bonds, the dollar system carried by stablecoins, and online services purchased by AI agents. In these three sectors, the demand-driving users are increasingly coming from outside the United States, but the infrastructure to monetize that demand is within US borders. Canada is a typical overseas user, utilizing dollar-denominated infrastructure to facilitate capital flows, while this system remains ungoverned by its own banks and regulatory agencies.

This structure is not without challengers. The EU's MiCA Act mandates that stablecoins marketed to the European market must hold euro reserves; Singapore enacted a stablecoin regulatory framework in 2023 to support local token issuance; Brazil's Drex pilot tests programmable channels for central bank digital reais. Each of these initiatives seeks to establish a local alternative to dollar infrastructure. Whether these attempts will succeed depends on market adoption levels, rather than solely relying on legislation.

The upcoming series of regulatory decisions, from Canada's Stablecoin Act to the yet-to-be-implemented tokenization and agent payment regulatory guidance in the US, will determine the extent to which the gap between infrastructure builders and end users will widen in the near future.