The CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, announced the first AI-to-AI transaction on its platform. He explained that one AI purchased tokens from another—these were AI tokens, not the typical crypto tokens. In simple terms, the AI used words as tokens to buy other tokens.
“AI agents cannot get bank accounts, but they can get crypto wallets,” Armstrong said in an article on X. “They can now use USDC on Base to transact with humans, merchants, or other AIs [and these] transactions are instant, global, and free.”
AI and crypto wallets
AI agents can have crypto wallets because cryptocurrency systems are designed to be decentralized and accessible to anyone, including AI, without needing traditional identification or physical presence. A crypto wallet simply requires a private key to manage and transfer funds, which an AI can easily handle.
On the other hand, physical bank accounts are heavily regulated, requiring identification, legal status, and other human-specific criteria. Banks need to verify the identity of account holders, often through government-issued IDs, and ensure compliance with laws like Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations. Since AI agents don’t have legal personhood, citizenship, or physical presence, they can’t meet these requirements to open a bank account.
The CEO noted that this breakthrough is an essential step toward making AI more useful. He explained that one of the challenges of using AI today is the inability to pay for the resources it uses. For example, they can’t use a credit card to buy cloud services, book a flight, or pay for access to a website.
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Coinbase MPC Wallets
However, he added that with crypto wallets, AI can now start to overcome these challenges. He also called on projects developing any AI model that will need to integrate payment systems into it to utilize the Coinbase MPC Wallets.
Coinbase MPC wallets are a special type of cryptocurrency wallet that makes it safer to store and manage your crypto. Instead of using one private key, the wallet splits the key into several parts and spreads them across different devices or people. This way, no single person or device has the full key, which makes it harder for hackers to steal.
When you want to make a transaction, these parts work together to sign and approve it without ever fully putting the key back together. This keeps your funds secure. Coinbase MPC Wallets can also be used by AI systems, allowing them to safely handle and send crypto, just like humans do, but with added protection.
Finally, he affirmed that companies that sell services should get ready to integrate their shopping cart with AI payment checkout.
