What AI Agents Need from Crypto Exchanges

By Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex

On February 11, Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets, the primary pockets infrastructure constructed particularly for AI brokers. The similar week, Stripe launched machine funds utilizing USDC stablecoins. Visa, PayPal, and Mastercard all introduced or expanded agentic commerce initiatives. In the span of some days, the biggest funds firms on this planet determined that software program wants its personal cash.

This didn’t occur in isolation. Stablecoin provide has crossed $300 billion. Settlement occurs in seconds. Smart contracts can maintain, transfer, and allocate capital with out a human within the loop.

For anybody working an alternate, this modifications the dialog. The query is now not whether or not AI brokers will take part in monetary markets. It is whether or not exchanges are constructing for that participation, or watching it occur from the surface.

The Platform Shift Already Happened

Centralized platforms began as order books for Bitcoin. They added perpetuals, then lending, staking, copy buying and selling, on-chain token entry, and now conventional monetary belongings. Users on main exchanges can commerce inventory futures, valuable metals, and crypto derivatives from the identical margin account, settled in the identical stablecoin, at any hour. That is now not an alternate within the conventional sense. It is a full monetary interface, and the aggressive benchmark is now not Binance or OKX. It is something that lets somebody transfer capital effectively.

The decentralized facet moved simply as quick. Hyperliquid processes billions in each day perpetual quantity by itself Layer 1 with execution that rivals centralized venues. Lighter launched on-chain perpetuals for Samsung and Hyundai inventory with 10x leverage. Jupiter built-in Polymarket instantly into its DEX, bringing prediction markets to Solana customers with out requiring them to bridge belongings or go away the app. The DEX-to-CEX perpetual quantity ratio tripled in 2025, from roughly 6 p.c to just about 19 p.c.

Both sides are converging towards the identical end result: entry to any market, any asset, at any time. The centralized-versus-decentralized debate is now not a helpful organizing precept. What separates the following era of platforms will not be which markets they listing. It is how intelligently they function.

Where AI Agents Hit a Wall

We have international, programmable monetary infrastructure. Stablecoin rails that course of trillions yearly. Smart contracts that execute advanced methods with out human intervention. Yet essentially the most succesful AI brokers at the moment nonetheless can’t independently execute a commerce, pay for compute, or rebalance a portfolio with out somebody clicking “verify.”

Coinbase took a significant step with Agentic Wallets. Their x402 protocol has processed over 50 million machine-to-machine transactions, and brokers can now maintain funds, commerce tokens, and transact on-chain autonomously. But past Coinbase, the infrastructure barely exists. Most exchanges haven’t any framework for agent-driven execution. No identification layer for non-human actors. No spending controls designed for software program that runs repeatedly and makes 1000’s of micro-decisions per hour.

Circle’s CEO has predicted that billions of AI brokers will transact with stablecoins inside three to 5 years. Google launched a Universal Commerce Protocol for agentic transactions. Projects like Kite are constructing complete blockchains round cryptographic identification and governance for autonomous programs.

Traditional finance will not be ready for crypto to determine this out. Banks and fee processors are already constructing agent infrastructure on their very own phrases. Once institutional capital flows by way of these proprietary programs, it doesn’t come again.

Why Crypto Should Be the Default

Every function that makes crypto inconvenient for the common retail person is what makes it ideally suited for software program. AI brokers don’t want buyer help or polished interfaces. They want permissionless settlement, programmable cash, and rails that by no means shut. Crypto already constructed that.

The drawback will not be functionality. It is focus.

Most exchanges nonetheless consider their platforms as serving human merchants who log in, place orders, and log off. The subsequent cycle shall be formed by platforms that serve each human merchants and autonomous brokers throughout the similar setting, throughout crypto and conventional belongings concurrently.

I’ve seen this sample earlier than. When stablecoins first gained traction, exchanges dismissed them as area of interest devices for buying and selling desks. Crypto constructed the dominant stablecoins, USDT and USDC nonetheless symbolize the overwhelming majority of the market, however the trade was gradual to deal with them as foundational infrastructure. That delay gave banks a gap. Now they are launching their own stablecoin products, competing for a similar settlement rails crypto pioneered. The window for AI agent infrastructure is narrower, as a result of this time conventional finance is shifting in from the beginning.

What This Demands from Exchanges

The platforms that matter in 5 years won’t be outlined by token listings or payment schedules. The differentiators are structural.

Unified settlement throughout asset courses. Traders and brokers want one margin framework that covers crypto, equities, commodities, and no matter comes subsequent. Fragmented programs with separate accounts for every asset class can’t help the pace or composability that agent-driven execution requires. At Phemex, for this reason we expanded into TradFi futures, bringing shares and valuable metals into the identical USDT-settled infrastructure as our crypto derivatives, and why we launched our AI-Native Revolution, embedding synthetic intelligence throughout operations and platform structure as a foundational layer reasonably than an added function.

Intelligent execution infrastructure. Static order books and guide threat controls have been designed for a world the place people make each choice. As markets develop extra advanced, platforms want programs that adapt in actual time. AI-driven threat administration, adaptive execution, and instruments that evolve with situations reasonably than lag behind them.

Agents as actual individuals. That means programmable spending controls, machine-readable APIs constructed for autonomous interplay, and identification frameworks that distinguish between human and agent exercise with out including friction to both. No alternate has absolutely solved this but. But those that begin constructing now will set the usual. The ones that wait will inherit another person’s structure.

What Comes Next

The trade spent a decade on ideology. Centralized versus decentralized. Crypto versus TradFi. Those debates have been vital. They are additionally over as organizing rules for what comes subsequent.

The subsequent chapter is about constructing infrastructure that makes all of those programs work collectively, and makes them accessible to the people buying and selling at the moment and the brokers that may function alongside them.

At Phemex, our dedication is simple. Build for what markets have gotten, not for what they have been. Unified settlement over fragmented accounts. Predictive execution over static controls. Agent-ready structure over human-only design.

The trade can look ahead to conventional finance to outline the following structure, or it may possibly construct it first.

We select the latter.

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