AI Agents to Overtake Humans in Crypto Transactions, Says Coinbase CEO
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong predicts that AI agents will surpass human transaction counts using crypto infrastructure. He believes that AI supplies programmable intelligence, while crypto supplies programmable money.
Armstrong frames this combination as 'Agentic Finance' or 'AiFi,' which Coinbase is building products for. The company has already released several products aimed at autonomous software, including Coinbase for Agents and Agentic.market.
x402, Base, and USDC are the anchor assets in Coinbase's strategy to provide financial infrastructure for AI agents. x402 adapts the HTTP 402 'Payment Required' response so a website or API can request payment during an internet interaction.