Jean Mayer, Pierre Morizot, and Damian Paturo, three people with stakes in France’s domestic cryptocurrency economy, warned that lawmakers have just six months to review the country’s tax code before it gets stuck abroad while other countries reap significant tax benefits from proper regulation of the fast-growing economy where autonomous artificial intelligence agents deal in stablecoins.
In an op-ed for Le Monde published on May 18, the trio argued that Article 150 VH bis of the French tax code, written in 2019, penalizes holders who convert crypto gains into regulated euro stablecoins and then transfer them to a bank account.
According to them, the conversion sequence triggers a 31.4% tax on unrealized capital gains, even though the European Central Bank classifies regulated stablecoins as electronic money. To avoid these unnecessary tax liabilities, many French coin holders never convert their stablecoins into fiat euros, costing the national budget an estimated 1 billion to 3 billion euros annually.
This warning carries additional impact because machine-to-machine payments have taken off, mostly settling into stablecoins. These proxy payments have contributed to the $46 trillion stablecoin transaction volume that Andreessen Horowitz reported in his latest “State of Cryptocurrencies” report. a report During the past year. According to the company, these numbers are on par with Visa’s annual productivity and exceed even PayPal by a factor of 20.
France loses opportunity as AI agents spend stablecoins
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to publish On May 18, he said that “the agent economy will be bigger than the human economy,” citing the Base Network, an exchange-backed layer 2 network, as his home base.
Artemis data Quoted from the base It shows that the x402 payment protocol has processed more than 178.7 million transactions worth more than $42 million since October 2025. Base handles 82.1% of total agent payment volume and supports 250,000 active AI agents daily, with infrastructure growing 400% year-on-year. Of these transactions, 99.8% were settled in USDC.
x402 standard, originally Developed by Coinbasewas transferred under the Linux Foundation in April 2026. Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, and Circle have all signed up as backers.
Cryptopolitan has done this before I mentioned The protocol allows AI agents and web services to process payments independently, covering tasks such as application programming interface (API) access, data purchases, and digital services without human approval for each transaction.
circle Fired Its Agent Stack solution in May 2026. Google Cloud and Solana launched a separate marketplace called Pay(.)sh, where AI agents, including Google’s Gemini, discover APIs and pay for them using stablecoins.
Capital will flee abroad if France does not resolve the tax dispute
French editorial The authors explained the problem that France will face as AI customer payments take off:
- A coin holder who exchanges Bitcoin for EURCV, the regulated Euro stablecoin, owes nothing.
- The moment the EURCV moves to a bank account denominated in the same Euro currency, the full capital gains bill becomes due.
The authors compared it to imposing a tax on each transfer from a PayPal balance to a linked bank account. The editorial noted that the French Court of Accounts, the national audit court, had described the framework as outdated.
Industry estimates in Le Monde indicate that stablecoins account for 40% to 75% of digital asset trading volumes. If French holders avoid entering into euro notes to avoid the tax event it triggers, this capital will remain permanently outside the domestic banking system, beyond the reach of both regulators and the tax base.
The risks extend beyond retail owners. Armstrong said during Coinbase May Earnings Billions of AI agents are expected to trade and send money, with blockchain considered the “only option” to settle this activity.
The six-month countdown has begun
The x402 Foundation already counts America’s largest technology and payments companies among its members. Others see the potential, and launch competing protocols to grab a piece of the agent payment pie. Cryptopolitan I mentioned previously Tempo and startup Stripe launched automated payments protocol in April, backed by $500 million in funding at a $5 billion valuation.
According to the authors of the op-ed, France has a tight six-month deadline to update its tax treatment of cryptocurrencies or watch a proxy payment layer be built elsewhere.
As they put it, France will have to choose between clinging to a seven-year-old tax that cannot accommodate an entire category of economic activity for the next generation or jumping on the train while others in the United States and Asia build the rails.
