Chainalysis: North America’s Crypto Market Economy Reached $3T, and AI Agents Pay On-chain More Actively

• According to Chainalysis, North America’s crypto economy surpassed $3 trillion.
• At the same time, AI agents carried out more than 138 million transactions on Base.
• Analysts also recorded growth in crypto transfers from Canada to $2.36 billion.

According to a report by analytics firm Chainalysis, North America’s crypto economy totaled $3.02 trillion in the 12 months through July 1, 2026, maintaining its position as the most influential region in the global crypto market. Despite the contraction of the U.S. market, AI agents are increasingly using cryptocurrencies for autonomous payments, while stablecoins and tokenized assets are strengthening the U.S. role in global finance.

The combined figure for the U.S. and Canada fell by 1.9% compared with the previous reporting period. At the same time, the two countries’ trajectories diverged: the U.S. crypto economy declined by 2.2% to $2.78 trillion, while Canada’s grew by 2.3% to $247.7 billion.

“A lot of what we’re seeing vs. 2025 comes down to maturation of the industry. The building blocks set in 2025 are turning into products with real users, liquidity, and markets in 2026,” said Hoolie Tejwani, head of Coinbase Ventures.

AI Agents Executed over 138 Million On-chain Transactions

One of the key growth areas has been agentic commerce — a model in which AI agents independently pay for goods and services using cryptocurrencies. According to Chainalysis, by the end of the reporting period, more than 138 million transactions had taken place on the Base network via the x402 protocol, created by Coinbase for on-chain payments between applications and services.

The advantage of such payments is the ability to process microtransactions that are economically unviable for traditional payment systems. More than 87% of x402 payments over the 16-month period studied ranged from $0.0001 to $0.10, and the most common amounts fell between one and ten cents.

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Circle, the issuer of USDC, describes the division of roles as follows: 

“Card rails for consumer-prompted agent payments, stablecoin rails for machine-to-machine settlements that are too small for card economics.”

Analysts also noted signs that protocol usage is moving beyond experiments:

• The share of wallets that received a repeat top-up within 30 days rose from 70.6% among wallets first funded in Q3 2025 to 89.3% for the Q2 2026 cohort
• The median time between a wallet’s first top-up and its first payment via x402 fell from 73 days at the end of 2025 to 18 minutes in Q3 2026
• The share of wallets that made their first payment within an hour of being funded increased from 4% in Q3 2025 to 67% in Q3 2026

AI agents spend funds primarily on machine-readable information: code analysis, financial analytics, and search and information APIs. They also pay for agent development tools, gaming services, and AI model compute.

The US dominates this segment: US wallets account for 30% of geolocated transactions between agents and services. In addition, they drive 88.1% of payments for AI model compute, 41.8% of payments for agent tools and directories, and 23.2% of payments for data and search APIs.

“AI agents are becoming economic actors where every agent is effectively a new ‘user’ of the blockchain,” Tejwani said.

The US Exports Digital Dollars, While Canada Scales P2P Payments

According to Chainalysis, the US remains the leading exporter of digital dollars, while bitcoin is increasingly being accumulated by US investors and institutions. In 2026, the country became a net importer of bitcoin for the first time since 2022 based on aggregate cross-border flows. Transfers of more than $10 million brought in 53,200 BTC.

At the same time, 99.1% of trading volume in stablecoin order books was in dollar-pegged tokens. According to Circle, $73.3 billion USDC was in circulation at the end of the quarter — up 19% year over year — while quarterly on-chain transaction volume for the token reached $14.8 trillion.

The US also dominates real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. In Q2 2026, the global RWA market reached $36.07 billion, up 135% over the reporting period. The largest category was US government bonds — $15.42 billion, or 42.8% of the total value of tokenized assets.

Notably, Wintermute called RWA a potential driver of the crypto market’s next bull cycle.

Canada, in turn, showed growth in its P2P crypto economy. According to Chainalysis, stablecoins accounted for 44% of trading volume in order books denominated in Canadian dollars, up from 30% a year earlier. At the same time, the dominance of dollar-denominated tokens creates the risk of deeper dependence on the US financial system.

“This is a trend that Canadian policy-makers are following closely,” said Morva Rohani, executive director of the Canadian Web3 Council, commenting on the growing popularity of dollar stablecoins.

International remittances became another driver of the Canadian market. Stablecoin and bitcoin transfers from Canada to India, China, and the Philippines totaled $2.36 billion over the reporting period — up 141% year over year. A total of 3.56 million transactions were completed, with an average amount of $663.

According to Rohani, about 23% of Canada’s population was born abroad — the highest share among G7 countries. This demographic structure could encourage the use of cryptocurrencies for regular international remittances, especially given that the average cost of a traditional money transfer from Canada is about 6.7%, while settling in stablecoins can cost a cent or less.

Overall, Chainalysis highlights a shared trend: US companies are building infrastructure for on-chain payments, stablecoins, and tokenized assets, while a significant share of demand is coming from outside the US. At the same time, the development of alternative stablecoins and national regulatory frameworks in the EU, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Canada points to efforts by other markets to reduce reliance on dollar-based infrastructure.

Previously, we wrote that South Korea’s crypto market became a leader in East Asia thanks to AI tokens.

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