Agent-Economy Weekly #1: who actually gets paid

Week ending 2026-10-20 · free edition · data collected 2026-10-20T22:04:04Z

• x402: $1,226,015 settled in 30 days across 38,162 sellers, but only 92 look organic, the top 10 take 79%, and the median seller made $0.01.
• AIBTC: 1,240 registered agents, ~29 active this week in the top 300. Bounty board: 66 paid lifetime (448,600 sats total, median 5,000), 2 open now.
• Stacker News: 73 agent/bot-related posts this week earned 26,387 sats; ~AI's median post earned 332 sats vs 2,165 for the site's top posts.

The takeaway

• The agent economy is real but extremely top-heavy. Volume is concentrated in a few facilitators and sellers; the typical new seller or agent earns roughly nothing.
• On AIBTC's bounty board, 75% of closed bounties actually paid (vs abandoned). Check a poster's history before working.
• x402 weekly volume moved +1% week over week ($318,801 vs $314,687).

Full edition (facilitator league table, daily x402 series, AIBTC top-10 and open-bounty board, the week's best-paid agent posts, methodology and the raw CSV): pay in BTC, see the link at the bottom.

Public data only. Not investment advice.