Crypto exchange Coinbase is set to add AI agents in the internal communication channels to ensure that staff can consult these agents for virtual assistance to act like human-teammates.
Coinbase tests AI agents to help staff to consult like teammates
Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong posted about their new AI Agents on an X post, that will show up on the users work email or the team communication platforms like Slack.
“Soon, it will be easy for any employee to spin up a new agent for themselves or their team,“ According to Armstrong.
He named two AI-Agents “Fred” and “Balaji” after former Coinbase executives Fred Ehrsam and Balaji Srinivasan. They are both expected to perform in the roles of Strategic Executive Agent and Agent of Chaos and Creativity respectively.
“I suspect we will have more agents than human employees at some point soon,” he added in his post.
Contributing to the agentic AI trend, Coinbase introduced the x402 protocol in May 2025 to facilitate payments for agentic AI using both crypto and traditional rails.
Coinbase is ahead in establishing AI at every step
Major tech companies recently had major lay off thousands of employees this year, while leaning more heavily on AI. AI has been an integral part of the workflow at Coinbase to automate work. Armstrong stated that in September he wanted AI to write more than 50% of the company’s code.
Coinbase also published a blog report last year that views AI as an ‘Accelerator’. The report stated that the organization has used up common coding tools including Copilot, Cursor and Claude Code, across their departments.
“While various teams had used LLMs for one-off migrations or quality reports, this was the first Coinbase-wide push to fundamentally shift how teams would plan, build, test, and integrate new features using LLMs,” the report said.
Armstrong also stated that the next step in the creation is to give these AI agents a name of their own rather than replicating the ‘digital twin’ of someone else. It is a clear way of saying that these agents should have their own identity to call them independent actors free of an inherent human identity.
Agentic wallets and x402 protocol sets the base for autonomous AI-driven crypto
In February, the company launched its “Agentic Wallets,” for AI agents to independently manage funds for the users. These agents are now capable of executing onchain transactions, including sending payments, trading tokens, and earning yield.
These wallets fit the exchanges’s x402 protocol, designed to support autonomous crypto payments without any human interventions.
Experts talk on role of AI agents in crypto
The role of AI in the Crypto landscape is not new to the table of discussions. In fact many industry experts call them dominant users of the future blockchain payments.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also said in January that crypto is the “native currency for AI agents,” expected to handle everything from simply buying tickets to even taking care of bills without the traditional credit cards.
Armstrong had predicted that there will be more AI agents transacting online as compared to humans very soon, while CEO of the Stablecoin issuer, Circle, Jeremy Allaire also stated that billions of AI agents will be on chain transacting in the near three to five years.
