TL;DR (70 words)
- Coinbase launched agent wallets for autonomous Bitcoin transactions as claims circulated recently of a $2.5 billion BTC dump completed in about 30 minutes.
- X posts alleged Wintermute, Binance, and Coinbase triggered short liquidations, though no venue confirmed coordination.
- Coinbase tied wallets to x402 and Base, while Lightning Labs shipped L402 tools and Google advanced UCP and AP2, underscoring accelerating agent commerce and heightened focus on liquidity risk.
Coinbase launched “agent wallets” that let autonomous software agents execute Bitcoin transactions, but the rollout landed alongside claims of a coordinated $2.5 billion BTC selloff completed in roughly 30 minutes. Automation is expanding just as liquidity events are being re-litigated in public. Released Wednesday via the Coinbase Developer Platform, the feature was positioned as infrastructure for machine-driven crypto payments. Instead, it arrived as traders debated whether the intraday swings were routine deleveraging or something coordinated recently.
🚨 BREAKING
BILLION DOLLAR BITCOIN MANIPULATION JUST HAPPENED AGAIN!
WINTERMUTE, BINANCE, AND COINBASE PUMPED THE CHART TO LIQUIDATE SHORTS, THEN IMMEDIATELY DUMPED $2.5 BILLION $BTC WITHIN 30 MINUTES.
THIS WAS ANOTHER COORDINATED MANIPULATION TO SHAKE OUT RETAIL!! pic.twitter.com/WL2bgkR4cv
— 0xNobler (@CryptoNobler) February 11, 2026
Agent wallets collide with liquidation narratives
Posts on X from 0xNobler alleged Wintermute, Binance, and Coinbase pushed price action to trigger short liquidations, then sold billions in BTC into the move. No venue confirmed coordination, yet the claim reframed the swing as a market-integrity issue. The thread argued that a liquidation cascade can create sharp, reflexive prints that punish leveraged traders. Others countered that the story worth tracking is tooling, not the blame game, as agents start executing on-chain already, at scale.
AI agents can write code, send emails, and make phone calls. But they still can't transact.
Today we're fixing that. Releasing a new set of tools that give agents native access to the Lightning Network: lnget for automatic L402 payments, MCP for node operations, remote signing…
— Lightning Labs⚡️🌐 (@lightning) February 11, 2026
Coinbase engineers Erik Reppel and Josh Nickerson said Agentic Wallets extend AgentKit, introduced in November 2024, by embedding wallets directly inside autonomous agents. The value proposition is delegated execution with guardrails, not manual clicking. Developers can set permissions so an agent can trade, rebalance, or pay for API calls and HTTP requests. Coinbase linked the flow to x402, a machine-payment protocol it said has processed 50 million transactions, and noted wallets can run on Base securely.
Programmable rails expanded to Lightning as Lightning Labs released tools that let agents transact on the Bitcoin Lightning Network using the L402 standard. The goal is a native Bitcoin payment rail for agents without direct private-key exposure. The package enables an agent to run a Lightning node and manage funds. Coinbase argued agents will buy data, compute, and digital services. Changpeng Zhao called crypto a native currency for AI; Jeremy Allaire projected billions of agent users.
Big tech is moving too. Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol on Jan. 11 and later rolled out Agent Payment Protocol 2, with Google Pay handling U.S. dollar transfers on a user’s behalf. The convergence is clear: agent commerce is maturing, and markets are pricing execution risk aggressively. After the alleged $2.5 billion BTC wave, focus shifts to order-book depth, leverage positioning, and exchange flows. The KPI is whether agent wallets become default checkout infrastructure globally.
