AI Agents Set to Drive Crypto Growth, Says Coinbase
Coinbase is predicting that crypto will experience significant growth due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence agents transacting with each other. According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, there have been over 100 million agent payments on Coinbase's Base blockchain through the first quarter of 2026.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claims that these AI agents will eventually out-transact all humans combined. The company is incentivized to promote this idea as it helped launch the x402 standard, which enables machine-readable paywalls for online resources.
The draft Ethereum standard ERC-8004, co-authored by Coinbase and other contributors, will also facilitate the growth of the agentic economy. This standard gives every registered agent on its network an identity token and a public feedback record.
Solana and Ethereum are the most likely to benefit from this trend as they have the largest agentic payment volumes. Their decentralized finance asset footprints are $49 billion and near $6 billion, respectively, with many financial services open to access from agents.