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Coinbase Reveals Last Week's Proportions of Proxy Trading Sources: Perplexity 26.8%, Claude 19.3%, Grok 15.3%

Coinbase Developer Platform released the sources of proxy trading transactions from last week: Perplexity accounted for 26.8%, Claude 19.3%, Grok 15.3%, ChatGPT 1.1%, Claude Code 0.7%, and command line and others 36.8%.

This statistic falls under the Coinbase for Agents launched on June 11, 2026. The product connects third-party models to Coinbase Advanced Trade via remote MCP, allowing users to bind accounts with OAuth and set limits to check balances, place orders, cancel orders, and rebalance using natural language, covering spot and derivatives, with stocks, prediction markets, and commodities still expanding. Grok has recently been added to the same whitelist as ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, and Perplexity Computer, allowing direct trading execution within the chat window.

The entry structure is consistent with the product form: the web-side MCP serves ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity; the terminal-side CLI and Skill serve Claude Code and local toolchains, hence CLI/Other leads at 36.8%, indicating no single model monopoly. In the conversational entry, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok together exceed 60%, while ChatGPT only accounted for 1.1% of proxy transactions that week, indicating that the research traffic from consumer-grade chat applications has not yet translated into order flow in Coinbase accounts.

In the previous week, the product structure provided by the same channel showed that the top three proxy transactions were BTC-USD futures, ETH-USD futures, and XRP-USD spot. The payment layer operates in parallel with x402: public reports indicated over 205 million transactions, approximately $53 million in trading volume, with Coinbase facilitating about 67%, over 80% settled on Base, and almost all using USDC. In the on-chain transactions of stablecoins, Coinbase stated that Base accounted for over 90%.

Brian Armstrong stated that the proxy economy could be larger than the human economy, reasoning that proxies cannot pass bank KYC and must use crypto accounts. Robinhood launched a proxy trading test on May 27, and Coinbase connected real accounts with MCP six days later; both parties included order fees, stablecoin fluctuations, and first-layer chain fees into the same account.

In terms of market mechanisms, buying is authorized limits from retail and developer proxies, while selling and counterparties remain Coinbase's order book and market makers. The driving force is the product launch and model integration, not macro events. Funds flow from users' fiat and crypto balances into proxy orders, then to BTC, ETH futures, and XRP spot, with some research and reasoning fees processed as micro-payments in USDC via x402. Beneficiaries include Coinbase providing the execution layer, Base and USDC providing settlement, and Perplexity, Claude, and Grok that have connected to MCP; under pressure are traditional app paths that still require users to click buttons to place orders, and the ChatGPT channel with only 1.1% of proxy transaction share this week.

Source: Public Information

ABAB AI Insight

Coinbase's proxy trading does not originate from chatbots but rather connects to the three layers it already controls: the USDC stablecoin, the Base layer settlement network, and the developer-oriented CDP/AgentKit. In 2024, it will first release AgentKit for wallet automation, in 2025, it will launch x402 with AWS, Anthropic, Circle, and Near, and only in June 2026 will it connect ChatGPT and Claude to real Advanced Trade accounts. The path follows the same logic as its institutional trading becoming Prime and retail becoming an app: first establish accounts and clearing, then integrate new entry points to collect fees.

Capital movement also follows this order. Each time a proxy places an order, Coinbase collects transaction fees; proxies use USDC to pay for research reports, data, and computing power, and Coinbase collects stablecoin circulation and Base settlement; users authorize their main or sandbox accounts to the models, with assets still held at Coinbase. This explains why it is necessary to create both the MCP web entry and the CLI developer entry: the former captures conversational distribution from Perplexity, Claude, and Grok, while the latter retains 36.8% of terminal traffic within its own toolchain. The motivation is to become the default brokerage account for proxies, rather than just another chat window.

Benchmarking against Robinhood's proxy trading tests and Public.com's "proxy broker," and further against Interactive Brokers exposing APIs to quantitative desks. The industry stage is about entry competition, not strategy maturity: public materials indicate over a hundred million x402 transactions, with amounts still in the tens of millions, showing that machines can pay and place orders, but the value per transaction remains thin. ChatGPT achieved 1.1% of transactions with the largest conversational volume, indicating that distribution rights do not equal execution rights.

Structural changes involve technological substitution combined with a shift in pricing power. Substitution occurs at the order interface: natural language plus authorized limits replace the order button in apps; pricing power shifts from "who owns the app opened by users" to "who owns the clearing accounts that models can connect to." The mechanism is that proxies do not have bank accounts and must use programmable stablecoins and exchange accounts; whoever first connects OAuth, risk control limits, and order books will collect fees from this new layer of added traffic.

ABAB News · Cognitive Laws

  1. Conversational entry does not equal transaction entry

  2. Proxies first change the order button, then change the asset custodian

  3. Entities that cannot pass bank KYC will hand their accounts to exchanges