Coinbase Says AI Agents Are the Future Of Crypto. So Which Cryptocurrencies Should You Be Buying?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently suggested that AI agents will change everything. And Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN) seems to agree. The company recently suggested that AI agents could be the future of crypto.

With that in mind, which cryptos could benefit from the newfound investor appetite for AI agents? Here are three that are on my investment radar right now.

Bittensor

At the top of the list is Bittensor (CRYPTO: TAO), a decentralized blockchain protocol primarily used for the sharing and training of large language models (LLMs). It's essentially a Layer 1 blockchain for open-source, decentralized AI projects.

Image source: Getty Images.

As such, Bittensor is capable of hosting high-profile AI agent projects on its blockchain. The most well-known of these is MyShell, which boasts 6 million users and 265,000 AI agents created.

For the year, Bittensor is up more than 45% and currently has a market cap of $3.5 billion, ranking it among the top 30 cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of size.

Kite

Second on my list is Kite (CRYPTO: KITE), which was purpose-built in 2025 for the brave new world of AI agents. It bills itself as "the first AI payment blockchain."

For the year, Kite is up 69%, and currently has a market cap of almost $275 million. Importantly, Kite has attracted the attention of Coinbase, which invested in the company back in October via its VC arm. That's important because, unlike smaller AI cryptos, Kite now has a listing on Coinbase and is therefore much more accessible to the average crypto investor.

Virtuals Protocol

Finally, there's Virtuals Protocol (CRYPTO: VIRTUAL), a platform for creating, owning, and monetizing AI agents. This was the hot new AI crypto when it first started trading back in 2024. In fact, for a brief period, Virtuals Protocol was the top-performing crypto in the world.

But since then, much of the hype has faded away. All you have to do is look at a chart for VIRTUAL, and you can see the classic crypto trading pattern: a huge, short-lived spike, followed by a massive decline, and then a series of ever-diminishing attempts to get back to previous trading levels. Despite these valiant efforts, VIRTUAL trades at a massive 87% discount to its all-time high from January 2025.

Or should you just buy Coinbase?

Those are all highly risky bets. A safer bet would simply be to find a company -- such as Coinbase -- that is doubling down on the AI agent investment thesis. For example, Coinbase recently experimented with giving AI agents their own crypto wallets, and has welcomed the idea of AI agents trading everything from tokenized equities to prediction market contracts on its crypto platform.

Just keep in mind that investing in crypto can be volatile and highly speculative. That goes doubly for AI cryptos. There are no sure things here, so make sure you do your due diligence before investing in any of them.

Dominic Basulto has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bittensor and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Coinbase Global. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.