Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: AI Should Have Crypto Wallets

Coinbase is launching a new initiative to explore the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with cryptocurrency wallets. The company has introduced an accelerator grant program offering $3,000 to each of five selected projects that demonstrate innovative ways to combine AI with crypto wallets. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT by OpenAI and Claude by Anthropic, can control funding operations using blockchain.

According to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, with cryptocurrency wallets, LLMs can significantly improve different economic activities by automating transactions for users. This idea is part of the general vision of expanding AI’s role in the economy, but it can be limited by some factors, such as the fact that AI cannot have accounts in conventional banks.

The “AI Wallets” feature was revealed by Coinbase’s engineering lead, known as Yuga Cohler, via X (previously, Twitter) on August 12. The demo explained how the specific AI system can motivate users by offering digital currency for tasks aimed at enhancing an image classification model. In this case, users choose one image from three options, and after task completion, the AI system adds money to the user’s cryptocurrency account. It’s a similar service to Amazon Mechanical Turk but with direct crypto payments by AI.

Coinbase Announces $15,000 Grant for AI and Crypto Wallet Integration

The $15,000 accelerator grant program announced by Coinbase Developer Platform aims at encouraging the development of AI-based applications that will incorporate LLMs and Coinbase’s Multi-Party Computation (MPC) wallets. This initiative responds to one of the difficulties arising from the use of AI agents and their inability to own bank accounts and make automatic financial transactions. When included in the blockchain systems, Coinbase aspires to reveal novel economic prospects to AI concerning these functions.

The grants will be awarded to developers who propose their ideas before the deadline of September 5. This program aims to explore the possible use of AI in the economic sector and is expected to create AI systems that are capable of managing and processing financial transactions in a blockchain environment.