AI Agents Take Control of Crypto Wallets, Outpacing Human Transactions

Crypto wallets are being used to enable AI agents to hold and manage funds without human intervention. Coinbase's Agentic Wallets, released in February, allow software agents to send, receive, trade, and earn yield on their own. The system uses the x402 protocol, a payments infrastructure introduced by Coinbase in 2025.

The x402 protocol allows for programmable spending caps and an audit trail, making it easy to set up and manage agent wallets. By June, Chainalysis reported that agentic payments had surpassed 100 million transactions on Coinbase's Base network, with most of the volume consisting of small payments under a few dollars.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong argues that banks are structurally excluded from serving AI agents because traditional finance requires identity verification, which software cannot provide. He predicts that the agentic economy will eventually transact far more per day than all humans combined.