Coinbase publishes the AiFi Framework: Promoting AI Agency for Autonomous Transactions, Payment and Management of Funds

On 28 August, Coinbase sent a communication on its “Agentic Finance” strategy, stating that AI agents were gradually becoming participants in economic activities and that future decision-making not only on behalf of users but also required the ability to pay, collect, hold and transfer assets. Coinbase divides AIFi into two main directions, “agent transactions” and “agent commerce”, and believes that encrypted and stable currencies can provide a 24/7, programmable, global and low-cost financial infrastructure. Coinbase states that products such as Coinbase Advisor, Coinbase for Agencies, x402 and Coinbase Business have been introduced to provide AI agents with investment management, trade and inter-machine capacity to pay. Of these, Coinbase for Agencies can connect to AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor through MCP, allowing users to set transaction targets, permissions and defences, and to execute transactions by AI agents on their own when they meet the conditions. Coinbase also disclosed that, based on its introduction of open payment standards x 402, more than 205 million transactions with a value of $53 million had been processed to date, covering 200,000 vendors, of which Coinbase facilitated 67 per cent. Coinbase states that USDC currently accounts for 99 per cent of the chained agent business transaction volume, and X402 accounts for 97 per cent of the agent financial agreement usage, with related activities mainly operating on Base. Coinbase believes that AI agents will become a new economic player and that encrypted money can provide them with the global, all-weather and programmable financial infrastructure that their traditional financial systems lack。