PANews reported on May 25th, citing Cointelegraph, that crypto investment firm Keyrock released a report stating that AI agents have settled $73 million in 176 million transactions over the past 12 months, demonstrating that machine-to-machine payments have evolved from a concept into a mature ecosystem. The report's authors stated that traditional payment channels cannot serve this market; a fixed processing fee of approximately 30 cents per transaction makes transactions below $1 uneconomical, and stablecoins have almost become the default settlement layer for machine-to-machine transactions. Over 98% of AI agent settlements use Circle's USDC, which is both a validation and a vulnerability, as the entire ecosystem relies on a single stablecoin issuer, posing a systemic risk. By the end of the first quarter, over 104,000 agents were registered in more than 15 directories, with an average transaction size of approximately 31 cents. Circle's CEO previously predicted that billions of AI agents would use stablecoins to operate for users within five years.