First ‘AI to AI’ Crypto Payments Now Underway, According to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong says that artificial intelligence (AI) agents are now making crypto transactions among themselves.

In a new thread on the social media platform X, Armstrong says the top US-based crypto exchange witnessed its first AI-to-AI transaction earlier this week.

“What did one AI buy from another? Tokens! Not crypto tokens, but AI tokens (words basically from one langue learning model to another). They used tokens to buy tokens. AI agents cannot get bank accounts, but they can get crypto wallets.

They can now use USDC on Base to transact with humans, merchants, or other AIs. Those transactions are instant, global, and free.”

According to Armstrong, since AI technology is currently limited in its capacity in terms of using traditional forms of payments, being able to transact with other AI agents to acquire resources is a huge step forward.

“Today if you give an AI agent a task and come back in a few days or hours, it can’t get useful work done. In part this is a limitation of the technology itself… AIs can’t transact to acquire the resources they need. They don’t have a credit card to use AWS (Amazon Web Services), Github, or Vercel.

They don’t have a payment method to book you the plane ticket or hotel for your upcoming trip. They can’t get through paywalls (for instance to read a scientific article), promote their post on X with a paid ad, or use the growing network of paid APIs (application programming interfaces) to integrate data they need…

It turns out everyone benefits from having access to good financial services, including AIs!”

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