Coinbase unveils Agentic Wallets for autonomous AI crypto use
Coinbase has introduced a crypto wallet infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents, enabling them to spend, earn and trade digital assets without human intervention. In a post on Wednesday, Coinbase engineers Erik Reppel and Josh Nickerson said the new Agentic Wallets capability extends current AI tools—which can answer queries, summarize documents and assist with tasks—by allowing them to execute transactions and orders on behalf of users.
“The next generation of agents will not just advise—they will act,” they wrote, noting that such agents could monitor decentralized finance positions, rebalance portfolios, pay for compute resources and API access, and participate in creator economies.
Source: Coinbase Developer Platform
Reppel and Nickerson said Agentic Wallets build on Coinbase’s AgentKit framework, launched in November 2024, which allows developers to embed wallets directly into agents. The agents can transact over Coinbase’s x402, a payments protocol designed for autonomous AI scenarios that has reportedly processed 50 million transactions.
Through x402, “Agents acquire API keys, purchase compute, access premium data streams, and pay for storage—entirely autonomously, creating self-sustaining machine economies,” the engineers said.
They added that agents will be able to operate on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network, to manage positions and execute strategies wherever opportunities arise. “Build agents that monitor yields across protocols, execute trades on Base and manage liquidity positions 24/7. Your agent detects a better yield opportunity at 3 a.m.? It rebalances automatically, no approval needed because you’ve already set permissions and controls.”
AI agents enabled on the Bitcoin Lightning Network
Lightning Labs, the developer of the Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning Network, also released a toolset on Wednesday that allows AI agents to transact over Lightning using the L402 protocol standard. The agents can operate a Lightning node and manage a Lightning wallet holding native Bitcoin (BTC) without access to the private keys.
Source: Lightning Labs
Separately, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek on Monday launched ai.com, a platform that enables users to create personal AI agents to handle everyday tasks, including managing emails, scheduling meetings, canceling subscriptions, shopping and trip planning.
Industry executives express confidence in agentic AI
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle, said on Jan. 22 that billions of AI agents could be transacting with crypto and stablecoins for routine payments on behalf of users within three to five years. Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has also said that “the native currency for AI agents is going to be crypto,” forecasting use cases ranging from purchasing tickets to settling restaurant bills.
Outside the crypto sector, Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol on Jan. 11 to support agent-driven commerce. The protocol uses Google’s Agent Payment Protocol 2 to complete transfers on behalf of users, with Google Pay as the default payment handler for U.S. dollar transactions.
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