Coinbase's new tool allows AI intelligence to "control money"! "AI + e-commerce" is moving from a shopping guide tool to an intelligent economic gateway.

The largest cryptocurrency exchange in North America, Coinbase (COIN.US), launched a new tool on Thursday that allows AI agents to directly trade and make payments on behalf of users. This represents a broader bet by the leading cryptocurrency company - AI agents will become the primary interface for people's financial and e-commerce transactions. According to reports, the initial version of "Coinbase for Agents" will allow AI agents, such as ChatGPT or Claude, to execute cryptocurrency-based trading patterns using natural language commands. For example, customers can instruct their agents to rebalance their investment portfolios, identify key technical trading opportunities based on quantitative models, implement tactical strategies, and manage positions over time. Ultimately, the tool will expand these capabilities to include stocks and prediction markets in a broader sense. Additionally, with the help of Coinbase's machine-to-machine payment protocol called x402, AI agent workflows can efficiently make payments for services such as paid research, data APIs, on-demand computing, and digital infrastructure without the need for human intervention, and execute trades based on insights obtained. Coinbase's leadership in this AI-driven trading dynamic has significant implications for the "AI + e-commerce" trend. However, the core of this initiative is not just about "AI assisting users in trading crypto assets," but about enabling AI agents to have programmable financial accounts, autonomous payment capabilities, and continuous execution capabilities, thus moving towards a "AI + e-commerce" model where AI agents play a central role. The x402 protocol, created by Coinbase, is positioned as a native internet payment standard that supports stablecoin payments initiated directly through HTTP, enabling APIs, applications, and AI agents to automatically complete micro, instant, machine-to-machine payments. This means that AI agents are no longer just front-end guides for searching, recommending, price comparison, and generating shopping suggestions, but are now involved in payment, settlement, subscriptions, data purchasing, computing power purchasing, financial market trading strategy execution, business operation tracking, and other aspects of the commercial loop. Coinbase's initiative is not just riding the wave of AI, but placing a bet on "AI agents becoming the new economic entities on the internet." This move is expected to drive the "AI + e-commerce" model towards a more comprehensive trading operating system, but its success will depend on the maturity of security, compliance, merchant adoption, and user authorization mechanisms. From automated trading to financial operators, the internet finance sector is embracing the era of "AI agents." The company believes that this stage of intelligent agent payments allows customers to bypass the active management of traditional login interfaces or long-term subscription requirements, making it a crucial precursor to a comprehensive AI agent shopping model. In AI agent shopping, the agent will browse on behalf of users, find the best trade paths, conduct research, make selections, and complete the entire purchasing process. Lincoln Murr, the product manager for AI at Coinbase, stated in an interview, "The whole idea is to give AI agents access to funds and, through this financial independence, expand their capabilities to cover almost anything on the internet." "In the 2010s, every internet company went through the process of transitioning from desktop and web to the mobile environment. Now, in the late 2020s, we are witnessing the same transformation, with AI agents becoming the primary economic entities on the internet." This launch comes during a period of prosperity in the global stock market for AI investments, with intelligent agent systems being one of the hottest AI investment themes. At the same time, the cryptocurrency industry is still recovering from a relatively downtrend, making this launch not only a bet on the AI trend but also an attempt to advance in a reverse direction during a soft period in cryptocurrency trading cycles and environments. Coinbase will earn transaction fees from the trading patterns executed by AI agents, and in terms of payments, it will generate fees and spreads from USDC liquidity, one of the key settlement currencies for AI agent trading. It also benefits from the increasing trading volume on the Base platform, which is its internal Layer 2 blockchain that provides underlying blockchain technology support for these transactions. Murr stated that the x402 protocol was created in May 2025 and has processed over 100 million transactions since its launch. According to data from x402scan.com, in the past 30 days, approximately 157,000 AI agents have used this protocol as buyers. He stated, "We immediately saw the demand and interest in the autonomous payment capabilities of AI agents, which was a huge awakening moment for us, realizing that AI agents are fully capable of becoming the main financial participants in these new types of activities on the internet." "AI + e-commerce" may become the strongest business loop in the "AI +" arena. From the perspective of "AI + e-commerce," this signifies that the e-commerce industry is transitioning from a narrative concept to a core focus on e-commerce platforms. In the past, the core entrances of e-commerce platforms were search boxes, homepage recommendations, live streams, and advertisements; in the future, the entrance may evolve into user-authorized intelligent agents: understanding needs, selecting products, accessing price and inventory data, purchasing paid research or APIs, comparing solutions, executing payments, and completing transactions within the user's set budgets, preferences, and risk control rules. For example, OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol explicitly defines it as an open infrastructure connecting ChatGPT users with merchants, supporting structured product catalogs, inventory understanding, and contextual product presentations; Google's Agent Payments Protocol emphasizes enabling agents to securely initiate and complete payments across different platforms. Traditional e-commerce search relies on keyword matching, ad ranking, and product lists; Alexa for Shopping can trigger product comparisons, skincare routine constructions, birthday reminders and gift suggestions, shopping cart generation, price tracking, and even automatic reordering based on user intent. The "AI + e-commerce" model integrates large language models/AI agents, recommendation systems, user profiles, payment/fulfillment chains, and multi-device interactions into a single shopping loop, essentially upgrading shopping search bars like Amazon.com, Inc. from "product retrieval boxes" to "consumer decision-making operating systems." Coinbase's move appears to provide a financial foundation for "intelligent agent e-commerce." AWS, the cloud computing platform under the global e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc., recently launched the Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments preview, explicitly supporting AI agents to instantly access and pay for web content, APIs, MCP servers, and other agent services, with underlying wallet and payment capabilities provided by partners such as Coinbase and Stripe. This indicates that there is a consensus among major platforms that agent business is not just about chatbot upgrades but requires new trading infrastructure consisting of identity, authorization, payment, settlement, auditing, risk control, wallets, and merchant interfaces. Whoever controls this infrastructure may potentially control the entrance to the next generation of internet trading models. The value chain in the "AI + e-commerce" sector may shift from "traffic platforms receiving advertising fees" to "intelligent agent platforms receiving transaction, payment, data, and execution commissions." The beneficiaries of this trend include not only cryptocurrency payment and stablecoin settlement platforms like Coinbase but also cloud providers, payment networks, merchant data protocols, identity authentication, anti-fraud measures, agent tool orchestration, enterprise API markets, and AI shopping portals. However, the risks are also significant: once AI agents have the ability to access funds, errors in recommendations, fraudulent merchant practices, prompt injections, abuse of permissions, payment disputes, and regulatory responsibilities may be greatly amplified.