AI giving AI cryptocurrency? Interpreting Coinbase's facilitation of the first AI-mediated cryptocurrency trading event
The era of AI encrypted trading has arrived, with Coinbase and Circle taking the lead.Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
On the last day of August, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong brought the latest heavyweight news to the cryptocurrency industry—"At @CoinbaseDev, we witnessed the first AI-to-AI cryptocurrency transaction." After experiencing the "AI industry explosion moment" brought by ChatGPT, many people couldn't help but exclaim upon hearing this news: Is the cryptocurrency industry about to welcome "AI trading players"? "Can AI also trade cryptocurrencies?" "Will retail investors have no role in the cryptocurrency industry in the future?"
This article provides a brief interpretation and analysis of the event of Coinbase facilitating the first AI agent cryptocurrency transaction and the potential changes it may bring to the industry.
Coinbase is Serious About AI Agent Trading
On August 31, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rarely published a long article titled “AI is Paying for Other AI Products with Cryptocurrency” on the X platform.
The article begins by stating, "This week at @CoinbaseDev, we witnessed the first AI-to-AI cryptocurrency transaction."
He then explained, "What did one AI buy from another AI? Tokens! Not cryptocurrency tokens, but AI Tokens* (essentially resources from one LLM to another, note: can be understood as a unit of measurement for AI computing power consumption, such as the API usage of large language models like OpenAI)*. They used tokens to purchase Tokens. Although AI agents cannot obtain bank accounts, they can acquire cryptocurrency wallets. Now, AI agents can use USDC on the Base network to transact with humans, merchants, or other AIs. These transactions are instantaneous, global, and free."
He further elaborated on the current development status and challenges faced by AI agents.
"This is an important step for artificial intelligence to perform effectively. Today, if you give an AI agent a task and come back after a few days or hours, it may not be able to perform effectively. To some extent, this is a limitation of the technology itself, as products like devin.ai are gradually approaching a solution to this problem. But another reason is that AI cannot transact to obtain the resources they need. They do not have credit cards to use AWS, Github, or Vercel (and other technical platforms and tools). They have no means to book upcoming travel-related flights or hotels. They also cannot break through paywalls (like reading academic articles), promote their posts through paid ads on the X platform, or use the growing paid API network to integrate the data they need."
Finally, Brian called on developers who are working on payment-related large language models or AI models to integrate Coinbase's MPC wallet and expressed optimism about the vast prospects of the AI economy.
He mentioned, "If you are developing an LLM or AI model with cryptocurrency wallet integration for payments, please try to integrate our MPC wallet, sourced from the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP). If you are a service provider, please prepare your shopping cart for AI checkout functionality. It turns out that everyone will benefit from access to quality financial services, including AI. (Just imagine) how large will the economic market between AI and AI be in a few years?"
It is worth mentioning that Brian referred to AI agents multiple times using "They," which perhaps in a certain sense also represents that AIs capable of transacting and paying with cryptocurrency have developed a certain level of "personalized operational capability."
Moreover, just yesterday, Coinbase senior software engineer yuga.eth also posted stating, "We are building an SDK that will empower bots/AI agents with the following capabilities:
Send USDC for free;
Trade cryptocurrencies;
Bet on prediction markets;
Stake ETH, SOL, etc.;
Convert between fiat and cryptocurrencies;
Deploy/create NFTs;
Bridge across L2.
If you are interested, please contact me."
It is evident that Coinbase is not just talking about empowering AI agents to handle cryptocurrency transactions; they are actively conducting development research and implementing related fields.
If this can be realized, AI agents may become one of the important roles in the cryptocurrency market in the future. After all, compared to human traders, AI agents may experience exponential growth in the volume of data they can process, trading efficiency, and trading accuracy.
Additionally, from the messages released by Jesse Pollak, the head of the Base protocol, regarding wallets, we can also glimpse Coinbase's layout in payment gateways.
On August 13, Jesse posted, "I outlined my 'dream wallet,' which will be 10 times better than any current Web2 or on-chain wallet. We need to solve a series of difficult challenges, but I believe we can achieve this within the next 6 to 12 months. On-chain will be 100 times better than online."
On August 26, Jesse referenced a previous tweet about on-chain shopping operations and stated again, "This is just a small thing— but I checked out with my smart wallet, and the store automatically combined the approval and withdrawal of USDC into one transaction. Previously, it might have been two approvals, one of which was meaningless to most ordinary users. Slowly but surely, it will be realized."
Jesse's posted operation interface
Considering the rapid development of the Base network this year, Coinbase's layout for AI agent cryptocurrency trading can be described as methodical:
The foundation is the Base network. Its main role is to provide a stable operating ecosystem and development soil for numerous developers and ecological applications;
The tool is the smart wallet. On one hand, Web2 users and vast amounts of funds can flow into the Coinbase and Base ecosystem; on the other hand, it provides a direct trading channel and trading environment for AI agents' operations.
The result is ecological applications. In the future, social applications including the Farcaster protocol, on-chain stores like Onchain Store, and consumer applications like BlackBird are expected to achieve "one-stop" foolproof operations with the help of AI agents.
It can be said that the application direction of AI agents in the cryptocurrency industry is extremely broad, covering various life scenarios including trading, staking, betting, gaming, socializing, creation, and more.
Of course, in the intersection of AI agents and cryptocurrencies, Coinbase is not the only player in this field. Stablecoin issuer Circle has also begun its own "territorial layout."
Circle CEO: USDC Will Become the Preferred Stablecoin Network for AI Agent Projects
In August, Skyfire, founded by former Ripple executives, recently announced the completion of an $8.5 million seed round of financing, aimed at providing cryptocurrency payment solutions for AI agents. Investors include USDC issuer Circle, Ripple, Gemini, and the venture capital firm of Silicon Valley billionaire and Bitcoin advocate Tim Draper.
The company has developed an open-source payment system that allows autonomous AI agents to conduct various transactions on the internet, including purchasing data storage, creative assets, plane tickets, and daily necessities. Its payment network operates based on the USDC stablecoin and is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with plans to expand to other blockchains in the future.
Skyfire co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi stated, "Traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI, while cryptocurrencies and blockchain provide 24/7 microtransactions, low fees, and high-efficiency solutions. The company has collaborated with several clients, including parts manufacturers for automotive service centers in India and AI infrastructure providers, and is in discussions with multiple large language models (LLMs) to adopt USDC-based AI agent payment solutions."
On August 21, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that USDC will become the preferred stablecoin network for AI agent projects. Previously, Circle had invested in the Skyfire project in this field, aiming to further promote the arrival of the era of on-chain machine-to-machine economic activities.
As the second-largest stablecoin with a total circulation of $34.6 billion, USDC's application in the cryptocurrency industry is second only to the stablecoin USDT issued by stablecoin issuer Tether. In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI agents today, USDC may continue to play the role of "blood of the AI economy," just as it does in the cryptocurrency industry as a liquidity carrier.
Conclusion: The AI Economic Market May Become the Mainstream of Future Market Economy
In the comment section of Brian's long article, Bitcoin Sage, co-founder of Delpin Labs, posted, "The AI-to-AI economy has emerged and will exceed the wildest expectations of humanity. This transaction is the first domino in a chain reaction that will change the entire financial landscape, meaning that, on one hand, AI can access resources and services without human gatekeepers. This is rocket fuel for their capabilities; on the other hand, we are not just automating existing jobs, we are creating entirely new forms of value creation and exchange. For crypto-native users, this opens up incredible possibilities: personal assistants becoming the primary entry point for interacting with crypto/blockchain; ultra-efficient arbitrage and market-making across multiple protocols; on-chain data analysis with unprecedented depth and speed; everyone, even those who cannot code, having algorithmic trading capabilities. The fusion of AI and crypto is not just another technological trend; it is the foundation of a new economic era. AI robots are not just participating in the economy; they will drive the economy into the next era. The question is not whether this will happen, but how fast it will happen and how prepared we will be—whether from personal, financial, or business perspectives."
Of course, many people express concerns about the risks and hidden dangers that may arise from AI agent cryptocurrency transactions, including the profound impacts on society from changes in taxes, employment, and more.
But in any case, the future has arrived, and what we can do is either immerse ourselves in it and actively embrace the era, or cling to the past and wait to be eliminated by the times.
