Coinbase launches wallets that let AI agents spend and trade crypto

Coinbase has launched Agentic Wallets, a new type of crypto wallet built just for artificial intelligence agents. These wallets let AI systems manage money and complete blockchain transactions without needing human approval.

The announcement came 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.

Here’s how Coinbase agentic wallets work

At the core of the system is the x402 protocol, a payments standard created 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 just 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 don’t need to write complex blockchain code from scratch.

These wallets also support gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 network. This means agents won’t get stuck if they run out of network fees while operating autonomously.

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 an important step toward a future where AI systems are not just advisers, but actors in financial systems.