Elon Musk’s “Grok” accounted for about 60% of AI agent-based cryptocurrency trading volume recorded on **Coinbase** over one week in September, while **OpenAI**’s ChatGPT accounted for just 1.54%.
Key points
Of the AI agent trading volume measured on Coinbase from September 14 to 21, Grok accounted for 59.54%, while Claude accounted for 13.37% and ChatGPT just 1.54%.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong described Grok on September 25 as “the top client for agent traders operating on Coinbase.”
Coinbase has not disclosed the total dollar value of AI agent trading or which specific coins the agents actually bought.
Grok dominates agent trading on Coinbase
The statistics, published by Coinbase’s developer account on the social platform X, cover AI agent orders placed on Coinbase between September 14 and 21 and categorize each type of AI client by its share of the nominal trading volume behind those orders.
Grok ranked first with 59.54% of the total, followed by custom CLI (command-line interface) setups at 21.73% and **Anthropic**’s Claude at 13.37%. **Perplexity** accounted for 3.48%.
CEO Brian Armstrong commented on the post on September 25, saying, “The leading client agent traders are using on Coinbase right now is Grok.” Musk, whose chatbot Grok is integrated into X—a platform popular with crypto traders—replied to the post with a single word: “Cool.”
Note that these data reflect performance over a specific one-week period and are based on ‘dollar trading volume,’ not the number of users.
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Cathie Wood and Armstrong focus on ‘AI agent money flows’
ARK Invest CEO **Cathie Wood** said investors should pay close attention to where AI agents direct their spending during a panel discussion at the Robinhood Summit in Houston on September 30. “I think you’re going to hear more and more about ‘follow the agents’ going forward,” she predicted.
In a separate statement on September 25, Armstrong wrote that crypto and stablecoins would become the “go-to payment rail” for AI agents. In other words, he expects blockchain-based infrastructure to become the primary payment network as AI agents transact and make payments autonomously.
However, these figures show only market share, not the overall scale. Coinbase has yet to disclose the total dollar value of AI agent trading or a list of the individual coins the agents actually bought.
The only figure Coinbase has disclosed indirectly is the scale of its proprietary agent payment protocol, ‘x402.’ In just over a year, x402 reportedly processed more than 230 million transactions, with total payments exceeding $54 million.
Since the launch of ‘Coinbase for Agents’
According to Coinbase, linking an agent takes as few as three clicks. Grok and Perplexity users can connect by selecting Coinbase in the plugins or connectors tab, while ChatGPT and Claude users connect through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
According to the related documentation, Coinbase states that Claude asks for an additional confirmation in chat before creating an order, while ChatGPT is designed to create an order in a single turn.
‘Coinbase for Agents’ officially launched on June 11, enabling AI assistants to trade spot and derivatives-based crypto directly from users’ accounts. On September 22, it expanded its supported asset classes to include U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Grok’s share reportedly surged from 15.3% to 59.5% across three weekly snapshots since its native integration went live in early September.
Related article: Robinhood, Binance and Coinbase now accept orders from AI agents: What you need to know