Bybit has opened a dedicated account type that lets AI trading bots operate inside a walled-off space, separate from a client's main funds. The crypto exchange is pitching the feature, which it calls the AI Subaccount, at developers and traders across the Middle East and North Africa.

The launch lands in the middle of a fast-moving shift. Over the first half of 2026, at least ten retail brokers and platform vendors wired AI agents into live client accounts, according to a FM Intelligence study, most of them running on the same open plumbing. Bybit's move pulls a crypto exchange into that group.

According to the company, the AI Subaccount confines all bot activity to the segregated account, with no access to the main account or other subaccounts.

Access runs through an API-only layer, and clients can set leverage Leverage In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders Read this Term caps, maximum allocation and withdrawal limits. The exchange says users keep read-only oversight of the bots in real time.

Bybit describes the setup as a new standard for risk control in what it calls agentic trading. That claim sits against a market where several brokers built near-identical guardrails months earlier.

The Same Wave That Already Swept Retail Brokers

The pattern Bybit is joining took shape fast. Interactive Brokers connected Claude to its customer accounts on June 1, routing every agent-generated order into a review tab a human has to approve.

Days earlier, Robinhood opened ring-fenced agent accounts to its funded customers, keeping the bot activity walled inside a dedicated sub-account.

Others land in between. eToro hands an AI agent a funded sub-account starting at $200, letting clients delegate trades while the platform caps what the agent can reach.

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Platform vendors are in too. Spotware opened the cTrader platform to AI agents through a pair of Model Context Protocol servers that let third-party tools place trades in plain language.

Most of these run on the same rail, the Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic released in late 2024 that lets a platform expose its trading API once and accept whichever model a client plugs in.

The FM Intelligence study named Anthropic's Claude in nine of the ten launches it tracked.

A Security Model the Brokers Already Built

Bybit's core pitch, that an agent can trade but never touch deposits or withdrawals, is already familiar across the wave.

When ThinkMarkets launched its own MCP server, co-founder Nauman Anees drew the same line, saying the AI "cannot access traders' funds or make deposits or withdrawals," but it can place orders.

Crypto venues have been inching the same way. Bitrue said it would let users hand crypto portfolios to AI models including GPT-5 in late 2025, with clients picking which model manages their money and how much to allocate.

The data side moved first. Crypto.com began piping real-time market data straight into models like Claude and ChatGPT, positioning itself as a supplier to the agents rather than a host for them.

Bybit Pushes Further Onto the Brokers' Turf

The AI account fits a wider Bybit push into territory once held by retail brokers. The exchange Exchange An exchange is known as a marketplace that supports the trading of derivatives, commodities, securities, and other financial instruments.Generally, an exchange is accessible through a digital platform or sometimes at a tangible address where investors organize to perform trading. Among the chief responsibilities of an exchange would be to uphold honest and fair-trading practices. These are instrumental in making sure that the distribution of supported security rates on that exchange are effectiv An exchange is known as a marketplace that supports the trading of derivatives, commodities, securities, and other financial instruments.Generally, an exchange is accessible through a digital platform or sometimes at a tangible address where investors organize to perform trading. Among the chief responsibilities of an exchange would be to uphold honest and fair-trading practices. These are instrumental in making sure that the distribution of supported security rates on that exchange are effectiv Read this Term recently scrapped commissions and swap fees on stock CFDs across more than 380 instruments, and it has rolled out 24/5 stock CFD trading on names such as Apple and Tesla.

The MENA framing is not incidental. Bybit holds a full crypto licence in the United Arab Emirates and has leaned on the region for growth, including direct AED bank transfers through a payments tie-up.

Derek Dai, the exchange's regional head for MENA, said the region "is not just participating in the AI revolution; it is actively shaping it." Bybit is betting that local appetite for automation will carry the product.

That push runs alongside regulatory friction elsewhere. Singapore's central bank this month added Bybit to its investor alert list, next to Binance and KuCoin, and the exchange pulled back from onboarding new users in Japan last year.

No Rulebook for the Bots Yet

For all the security language, the rules around AI agents trading retail accounts remain thin. No regulator has written a framework aimed specifically at the practice.

The FCA's first horizon scan flagged AI as a shift it is watching, but supervisors including the SEC and ESMA have so far leaned on existing rules rather than new ones.

That leaves open questions the marketing does not answer, namely who is liable when an agent misfires, and whether automated strategies are suitable for the retail clients being invited to run them. For an exchange that lost about $1.5 billion in a 2025 cold-wallet breach, the security framing carries extra weight.

Whether walled accounts and read-only oversight are enough will be tested as bots, not people, place more of the orders. For now, Bybit is wagering that being early with a crypto-native version beats waiting for the rulebook.