Coinbase Achieves Milestone with First Crypto Transaction Between AI Agents

Coinbase has reached a significant milestone with its first cryptocurrency transaction executed entirely by artificial intelligence agents. This development marks a major advancement in the integration of AI with blockchain technology.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shared this achievement on August 30 via X, stating, “This week at @CoinbaseDev, we witnessed our first AI-to-AI crypto transaction.” Armstrong elaborated that the transaction involved one AI agent using crypto tokens to acquire additional tokens from another AI agent. These tokens, known as AI tokens, facilitate the learning processes of algorithms by providing them with data.

“They used tokens to buy tokens,” Armstrong noted, emphasizing that the ability to execute transactions is a key factor in enhancing AI effectiveness. Currently, AI agents face limitations due to their lack of traditional transaction capabilities, such as booking flights or managing social media beyond content creation. With crypto wallets, AI agents can now perform transactions using USDC on the Base platform, making interactions with humans, merchants, or other AIs instant, global, and cost-free.

Armstrong had previously advocated for integrating crypto wallets with large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. “Let’s help AI agents get work done (on your behalf) and participate in the economy,” he remarked.

This breakthrough follows recent efforts by crypto firms to enable AI agents to execute transactions. In August, Blockchain development firm Skyfire launched a platform allowing AI agents to spend money autonomously. Additionally, on June 11, Cointelegraph reported that Web3 infrastructure firm Biconomy is integrating AI agents to facilitate on-chain transactions for users. Biconomy co-founder Aniket Jindal described their Delegated Authorization Network as a new layer that authorizes AI agents to handle trading activities.