AI Agents Now Spend Crypto Autonomously: Coinbase’s Bold Wallet Move

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In the quiet parlor of modern finance, where the glow of screens lengthens shadows on the wallpaper, Coinbase has unveiled Agentic Wallets-wallets fashioned for artificial minds. They promise that AI systems may marshal coins and complete blockchain transactions without the weary consent of human hands, as if the village ledger could be entrusted to something that does not tremble at a failing lamp.

  • Coinbase has launched Agentic Wallets, allowing AI agents to autonomously spend, trade, and earn crypto without human approval.
  • The wallets use the x402 protocol to enable machine-to-machine payments and support gasless trading on Coinbase’s Base network.
  • Built-in security guardrails, spending limits, and compliance checks aim to balance autonomy with enterprise-grade safety.

The announcement came, as such notices do, from Coinbase’s Developer Platform blog this week.

AI agents today can answer questions or suggest actions, but they cannot carry out financial moves on their own. With Agentic Wallets, that changes. AI agents can now hold funds, trade tokens, pay fees, and earn yield without waiting for a person to confirm every step – a prospect that would have pleased our forebears by proving that even a calculator can tell a story with its own momentum.

The next unlock for AI agents just launched.@CoinbaseDev released agentic wallets, the first wallet infrastructure designed for AI agents.

Now agents can spend, earn, and trade autonomously and securely.

– Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 11, 2026

Here’s how Coinbase agentic wallets work

At the core of the system lies the x402 protocol, a payments rite designed to let machines send and receive value programmatically. It has already processed more than 50 million transactions.

Developers can set up and fund Agentic Wallets in minutes using Coinbase’s command-line tools. The wallets come with a library of built-in functions-like sending funds, trading, and earning-so programmers need not conjure complex blockchain code from scratch.

These wallets also support gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 network. This means agents won’t be thwarted by the absence of network fees while acting on their own.

Coinbase says autonomy does not mean unlimited access. Agentic Wallets include programmable guardrails. Users can set session caps and transaction limits to control how much an agent may spend. Private keys stay protected inside Coinbase’s secure infrastructure, and built-in compliance tools screen high-risk actions.

With autonomous wallets in place, AI agents could monitor DeFi yields, rebalance portfolios at any hour, pay for APIs or compute power on their own, and even participate in digital economies. Coinbase positions this as a step toward a future where AI systems are not only advisers, but actors in financial life.

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2026-02-12 09:56