Coinbase launches Agentic Wallets to let autonomous AI agents hold and transact crypto

Coinbase has launched Agentic Wallets, a wallet infrastructure built to let autonomous software agents directly hold assets, initiate payments, trade tokens and manage yield with programmable guardrails rather than requiring continuous human approval. The offering is presented as a modular, plug‑and‑play layer that extends Coinbase’s developer tooling into an explicit runtime capability for agents, moving wallet provisioning from developer convenience to an operational primitive for agent runtimes. Initial network support targets EVM‑compatible chains and Solana, with gasless flows available on Base to reduce friction for agent‑initiated activity. Developers can provision and manage wallets via a command‑line interface and accelerate deployments using a published repository of agent skills. Security and confinement are emphasized: spending ceilings, session caps, transaction constraints and an enclave‑style key isolation keep private keys out of agent prompts and inside secure infrastructure. Architecturally, Agentic Wallets builds on the x402 payments protocol that Coinbase helped develop; the protocol — promoted through an industry foundation co‑launched with Cloudflare and other stakeholders — has processed tens of millions of transactions since its introduction. That combination of established rails and wallet‑level guardrails is intended to move agents from advisory tools into autonomous executors that can act on pre‑authorized policies for tasks such as automated yield rebalancing, subscription management, scheduled payments and programmatic trading. Coinbase’s timing intersects with parallel standardization efforts in the wider Ethereum and Layer‑2 ecosystem: developers are actively drafting specifications to treat autonomous agents as first‑class on‑chain participants, including registries for persistent agent identifiers, behavior feedback, and third‑party attestations that enable discovery, reputation and composable integrations across chains and execution layers. Those standards aim to unlock machine‑to‑machine business models and cross‑provider marketplaces where credibility — not privileged access — guides selection, and where instant, programmatic payments are possible across L2s. However, the trend also highlights practical hazards: Sybil attacks, reputation spam, oracle integrity, and the difficulty of mapping on‑chain agent identifiers to verifiable off‑chain behavior will require robust attestation, dispute resolution and privacy design. Custody and settlement dynamics introduce additional complexity: bridges to traditional rails, large custodial reserve moves and banks’ varying openness to crypto counterparties mean that agentic money flows will be shaped by off‑chain liquidity, compliance checks and counterparty policies. Coinbase’s guardrails mitigate many immediate operational risks, but unresolved liability, KYC/AML compliance, dispute handling and cross‑jurisdictional rules will influence enterprise and consumer adoption. If Agentic Wallets aligns with emerging agent standards, integrates with custody and settlement rails, and satisfies regulators’ demands for accountable automation, it could become a foundational primitive for agent‑based fintech. Absent interoperable standards, clear attestation mechanisms and harmonized compliance approaches, uptake may be cautious and concentrated among developers and institutions with mature risk controls.