Coinbase CEO Says AI Agents Will Drive Crypto Growth, Not Replace It

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is rejecting the idea that artificial intelligence should pull companies away from crypto, arguing instead that AI agents will boost demand for blockchain-based financial services. In a weekend post on X, Armstrong said AI being a major trend “takes nothing away from crypto” and that agents will need programmable money rather than traditional banking rails, calling this a reason crypto becomes more important, not less. His comments reflect a broader industry push to position blockchain networks as payment rails for autonomous AI systems.

The Infrastructure Behind Machine-to-Machine Payments

Armstrong’s vision, often called agentic finance or AiFi, rests on three pieces of Coinbase’s stack: the Base network, the x402 payment protocol, and the USDC stablecoin. Base launched in 2023 as a general-purpose Ethereum layer-2 network. In 2025, Coinbase introduced x402, a protocol built on the HTTP “402 Payment Required” standard that lets software agents automatically pay for digital resources like APIs and data without manual checkout flows. USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin from Circle and the Coinbase-backed Centre Consortium, is used to settle those payments.

Transaction Volume Passes a Major Milestone

Chainalysis reported that agentic payments on Base via x402 surpassed 100 million transactions within about nine months, with transactions of at least $1 accounting for 95% of total value moved. It also found agentic payment wallets tend to be newer, hold more asset types, and carry smaller balances than typical Base users. Coinbase reports second-quarter earnings this Thursday, with analysts expecting revenue of $1.29 billion, a 13.8% year-over-year decline, and flat earnings per share.