France risks missing the wave of AI agents and stablecoin payments: Experts say tax system needs adjustment within 6 months to avoid being marginalized

Odaily Planet Daily News: An opinion piece published in the French media *Le Monde* points out that France may have only about 6 months to seize the new wave of industrial revolution led by "agentic AI". Otherwise, it risks being marginalized in the global digital financial system. Several French crypto industry insiders argue that online transactions driven by AI agents are growing rapidly, with most settlements already completed via stablecoins. According to the *State of Crypto* report by Andreessen Horowitz, the annual transaction volume of stablecoins has reached approximately $46 trillion, nearly three times that of Visa and 20 times that of PayPal, establishing them as a key infrastructure in the global payment system.

The article further points out that the x402 standard, promoted by Coinbase and adopted by Cloudflare, Google, and Visa, already supports AI agents in automatically completing payments via stablecoins, with cumulative transactions exceeding 119 million to date.

However, in terms of the tax system, France's current provisions are criticized as being unable to adapt to this trend. The complex tax treatment between stablecoin exchanges and fiat withdrawals is believed to discourage the flow of funds back into the banking system, causing a large volume of digital asset transactions to remain within the stablecoin ecosystem for extended periods. As AI agents and stablecoin payments gradually converge, the global financial infrastructure is being restructured. If France fails to promptly adjust its regulatory and tax framework, it may miss out on the dividends of this new wave of the digital economy.