Melker Bengtsson
TL;DR
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Bybit launched Bybit AI on September 9, an agent that lives within the Bybit app, presented by CEO Ben Zhou
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The AI trades spot, futures and options, and works as a customer support agent alongside humans
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Coinbase, Kraken, OKX and Binance opened their platforms to external agents; Bybit built theirs into the platform
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Version 2, planned for next month, will add external connectors such as X and stock market data
Today, September 9th, the world's second largest crypto exchange, Bybit, launched Bybit AI. Bybit AI is an agent that lives within your Bybit app. The launch was presented on a live stream on X this morning by Bybit CEO Ben Zhou.
What Bybit AI Does
The assistant will help Bybit users in ways that Claude and ChatGPT, for example, can’t, by integrating directly with Bybit’s execution layer. This means the AI is able to trade spot, futures and options. Additionally it’ll be able to execute actions related to earning, copy trading, loans etc. Secondly, the assistant is a customer support agent. The agent supplements the assistance from humans working in customer support.
Since the agent is directly integrated into Bybit, there’ll be no complicated setup for users. No API keys, no manual setup. For now, the agent is limited to the Bybit app, but in version 2 there’ll be external connectors, such as X and stock market data, Ben Zhou said in the live stream. Version 2 was said to be planned for next month.
He also hinted that, while the current version uses Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.6, users will in the future be able to connect their choice of model.
Convenience and Safety Over Openness
The exchange is not the first platform to integrate AI. But Bybit has gone a bit of a different route. Coinbase, Kraken, OKX and Binance have all opened up their platforms to external agents, often via an MCP. But Bybit has built theirs into the platform. That’s a different technical solution to the others.
Bybit CTO, Rockman Zhang, said in the press release:
We are not looking to add another dashboard or bolt on another chatbot. The goal is to make it easier for users to find what they need and take action in one place, with a simple interface that brings the right products and services together.
The benefit to this approach, as compared to the external agent approach, is manifold. For example, essentially, an MCP is just a wrapper for an API. Keeping the requests squarely within the bound of Bybit increases security. So does the AI’s sub-account.
Additionally, at Bybit, the AI agent gets a sub-account, rather than trading from your main account. This allows you to set up guardrails for the agent. It’s also a way to increase security.
The launch follows what Ben Zhou outlined in his keynote in January of this year, where he explained how AI was going to become a core part of the infrastructure on the platform. This is the first consumer facing part of that new vision.
So, Bybit has taken a different approach to integrating AI into their platform. Their bet is that convenience and safety will be more important to users than openness. That bet is now live, we’ll see which way the market chooses to move.
