What is an agentic wallet, and why do AI agents need one?

An agentic wallet is a crypto wallet an AI agent can operate under rules you set — a spending cap, an allowed list of services, an approval threshold above which it has to ask you. The agent holds the ability to pay; you hold the policy. Why agents need one: they can't have bank accounts or credit cards, and they shouldn't be handed your card number to paste into forms — that's both insecure and against basically every card agreement. A wallet with programmable limits is the version of 'giving your assistant petty cash' that actually has controls: the agent can settle a $12 purchase you approved without waking you, and it structurally cannot spend $500 because the cap is enforced by the wallet, not by the agent's good behavior. Coinbase's developer platform, and a growing set of wallet-as-a-service providers, build exactly this — spend policies, per-service limits, full transaction logs. The honest state of the category in 2026: real and growing, but early. The controls exist; the polish is still arriving.