Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Wenser ( @wenser2010 )

On the last day of August, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong brought the latest heavyweight news to the cryptocurrency industry - "At @CoinbaseDev, we witnessed the first encrypted transaction between artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence." After experiencing the "AI industry explosion" brought by ChatGPT, many people couldn't help but exclaim when they saw this news: Is the cryptocurrency industry about to usher in "AI trading players"? "Can AI also speculate on coins?" "Will there be no retail investors in the cryptocurrency industry in the future?"

Odaily Planet Daily will briefly interpret and analyze Coinbase's first AI proxy cryptocurrency trading event and the possible changes in the industry in this article.

Laying out AI proxy trading, Coinbase is serious

On August 31, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a rare long article on X platform titled "AI is using cryptocurrency to pay other AI products".

The article begins with, "This week at @CoinbaseDev, we witnessed the first encrypted transaction between artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence."

He then explained, "What did one AI buy from another AI? Tokens! Not encrypted tokens, but AI Tokens_ (basically a resource from one LLM to another LLM, Odaily Planet Daily note: it can be understood as a unit of AI computing power consumption, such as the use of tokens as a unit of measurement for API interface usage of large language models like OpenAI)._ They used tokens to purchase Tokens. Although AI proxies cannot have bank accounts, they can have encrypted wallets. Now, AI proxies can use USDC on the Base network to trade with humans, merchants, or other AIs. These transactions are instant, global, and free."

He then further elaborated on the current development status and current difficulties of AI proxies.

"This is an important step for artificial intelligence to effectively work. Today, if you give an AI proxy a task and come back in a few days or hours, it may not be able to work effectively. To some extent, this is the limitation of the technology itself, and products like devin.ai are gradually approaching solving this problem. But another reason is that AI cannot trade to obtain the resources they need. They do not have credit cards to use AWS_ (Odaily note: Amazon Web Services)_, Github, or Vercel (and other technical platforms and tools). They do not have a way to book plane tickets or hotels related to upcoming travel for you. They also cannot break through paywalls (such as reading academic articles), promote their posts on X platform through paid advertising, or integrate the growing paid API network to access the data they need."

Finally, Brian called on developers to integrate Coinbase's MPC wallet if they are working on payment-based large language models or AI models, and expressed optimism about the broad prospects of the AI economy.

He mentioned, "If you are developing LLM or AI models with integrated password wallets for payment, please try to integrate our MPC wallet, sourced from the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP). If you are a service provider, prepare AI checkout for your shopping cart. In fact, everyone will benefit from access to high-quality financial services, including AI. (Imagine) how large will the economic market between AI and AI be in a few years?"

It is worth mentioning that Brian used "They" multiple times in his long article when referring to AI proxies, which may also represent that AIs that can trade and pay with cryptocurrency have acquired a certain "personalized operational capability" in a sense.

Moreover, just yesterday, Coinbase senior software engineer yuga.eth also posted, "We are building an SDK that can empower bots/AI proxies to:

• Send USDC for free;

• Trade cryptocurrencies;

• Bet on prediction markets;

• Stake ETH, SOL, etc.;

• Convert between fiat and cryptocurrencies;

• Deploy/create NFTs;

• Bridge across L2.

If you are interested in this, please contact me."

It can be seen that in empowering AI proxies to handle cryptocurrency transactions, Coinbase is not just talking, but is making bold developments and implementing them in related fields.

If it can really be achieved, perhaps AI proxies will become an important player in the cryptocurrency market in the future. After all, compared to human traders, AI proxies may experience an exponential increase in the amount of data they can handle, trading efficiency, and trading accuracy.

In addition, from the messages about wallets released by Base Protocol leader Jesse Pollak earlier this year, we can also get a glimpse of Coinbase's layout in the payment gateway aspect.

On August 13, Jesse posted, "I outlined my 'dream wallet,' which will be 10 times better than any current Web2 or on-chain wallet. We need to solve a series of difficult challenges, but I believe we can achieve this goal in the next 6-12 months. On-chain will be 100 times better than online."

On August 26, Jesse referenced a previous tweet about on-chain shopping operations and posted again, "This is just a small thing - but I checked out with my smart wallet, and the store automatically approved and combined the USDC withdrawal into one transaction. It might have been two approvals before, which was meaningless for most ordinary users. Slowly, but surely, it will happen."

Operation interface released by Jesse

Looking at the rapid development of the Base network this year, Coinbase's layout in the field of AI proxy cryptocurrency trading can be said to be advancing step by step:

• Base network is the foundation. Its main function is to provide a stable ecological environment and to provide a development soil for many developers and ecological applications;
• The tool is the smart wallet. On the one hand, Web2 users and a large amount of funds can flow into Coinbase and the Base ecosystem; on the other hand, it provides a direct trading channel and trading environment for the operation of AI proxies.
• The result is ecological applications. In the future, social applications including the Farcaster protocol, on-chain stores including Onchain Store, and consumer applications including BlackBird are expected to achieve "one-step" foolproof operations with the help of AI proxies.

It can be said that the application direction of AI proxies in the cryptocurrency industry is extremely broad, covering scenarios including staking, betting, gaming, socializing, creating, and more aspects of daily life.

Of course, in the intersection of AI proxies and cryptocurrency, it's not just Coinbase that is laying out in this field. Stablecoin issuer Circle has also started its own "territory layout".

Circle CEO: USDC will become the preferred stablecoin network for AI proxy projects

In August, Skyfire, founded by former Ripple executives, recently announced the completion of an $8.5 million seed round of financing, aiming to provide encrypted payment solutions for AI proxies. Investors include USDC issuer Circle, Ripple, Gemini, and the risk investment company of Tim Draper, a well-known billionaire and Bitcoin advocate in Silicon Valley.

The company has developed an open-source payment system that allows autonomous AI proxies to conduct various transactions on the Internet, including purchasing data storage, creative assets, plane tickets, and daily necessities. Its payment network operates based on the USDC stablecoin and is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with plans to expand to other blockchains in the future.

Skyfire co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi stated, "Traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI, while cryptocurrencies and blockchain provide 24/7 microtransactions, low fees, and high efficiency solutions. The company has collaborated with multiple clients, including a parts manufacturer for an Indian automotive service center and an AI infrastructure provider, and is in talks with several large language models (LLMs) to adopt USDC-based AI proxy payment solutions."

On August 21, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that USDC will become the preferred stablecoin network for AI proxy projects. Previously, Circle had invested in the Skyfire project in this field, aiming to further promote the arrival of the era of on-chain machine-to-machine economic activities.

As the current total circulation is as high as $34.6 billion, the second-largest stablecoin, USDC's application in the cryptocurrency industry is second only to the stablecoin USDT issued by Tether. In today's rapidly developing AI proxy field, USDC may continue to play the role of "AI economic blood" just like it does in the cryptocurrency industry as a liquidity carrier in the future.

Summary: The AI economic market may become the mainstream of the future market economy

In the comments section of Brian's long article, Bitcoin Sage, co-founder of Delpin Labs, stated, "The AI-to-AI economy has already emerged and will exceed the wildest expectations of humans. This transaction is the first domino in a chain reaction that will change the entire financial landscape, which means, on the one hand, AI can access resources and services without human gatekeepers. This is rocket fuel for their capabilities; on the other hand, we are not just automating existing work, we are creating entirely new forms of value creation and exchange. For native crypto users, this opens up incredible possibilities: personal assistants become the primary entry point for interacting with crypto/blockchain; ultra-efficient arbitrage, market-making across multiple protocols; on-chain data analysis with unprecedented depth and speed; everyone, even those who cannot code, has algorithmic trading capabilities. The fusion of AI and crypto is not just another tech trend, it is the foundation of a whole new economic era. AI robots not only participate in the economy, they will also drive the economy into the next era. The question is not whether this will happen, but how fast it will happen, and how prepared we will be? Whether from a personal, financial, or business perspective."

Of course, there are many concerns about the risks and hidden dangers that may arise from AI proxy cryptocurrency trading, including far-reaching impacts on society such as taxation and employment.

But in any case, the future is here, and what we can do is either embrace the era actively or sit and wait to be eliminated by the era.

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