Coinbase Global (COIN) is rolling out two new AI investing tools as financial apps and investing apps race to bring the technology to the masses.
The major US crypto exchange said on Tuesday afternoon that it will begin offering what it describes as one of the world’s first AI-powered investment tools capable of giving SEC-registered investment recommendations around strategies such as tax-loss harvesting and multi-asset event trading.
Coinbase has also opened its platform up to AI agents that can execute more nuanced and customizable trading strategies, such as autonomously purchasing specific data on behalf of customers to better inform trades and portfolio allocation.
Max Branzburg, head of consumer and business products for Coinbase, said in an interview that the offerings represent Coinbase’s “first two steps” in unlocking advanced financial tools for everyday investors.
“This is going to lower the barriers to entry for more sophisticated financial advice and trading that today generally just institutions or ultra-wealthy people have access to,” Branzburg said.
The adviser is designed to analyze a customer’s portfolio along with what is happening in the outside world to uncover trading opportunities based around their personal preferences, according to Branzburg. He emphasized that the product is a distinct step forward compared to most AI chatbots, which stop short of explicitly offering financial advice.
“This is financial advice,” he said. “It’ll tell you exactly what to sell and what to buy.”
The new AI tools come with a broader avalanche of products Coinbase unveiled Tuesday during a Manhattan event. Those products include a further product expansion into everything from stocks, options, prediction markets, and pre-IPO derivatives to crypto credit card travel rewards.
Coinbase joins other major financial apps, including eToro, Robinhood (HOOD), and Public, that are racing to release new AI capabilities to customers that could dramatically shift the worlds of investing and finance.
For Coinbase and most other retail-facing platforms, the opportunity presents a potentially major increase in how often customers trade, argued Devin Ryan, head of financial research at Citizens, who is bullish on both Coinbase and Robinhood.
“The trading that we think could happen in agents trading on behalf [of customers] would be 10 to 20 times what the average customer is doing on their own, just because [average retail customers] don’t have the time or experience to be executing these strategies,” Ryan said in an interview.
