Armstrong Rebuts Calls for Crypto Companies to Abandon Blockchain

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is pushing back against calls for cryptocurrency companies to abandon blockchain and focus on artificial intelligence. According to him, AI and blockchain are complementary technologies that can work together seamlessly.

Armstrong argues that as autonomous AI agents become more prevalent in the digital economy, they will require programmable money and automated payment systems to function without traditional banking accounts or manual checkout processes.

To address this need, Coinbase has developed an agentic finance stack consisting of three components: Base, USDC, and x402. Base is a Layer 2 network that enables faster and cheaper onchain applications; USDC is a stablecoin linked to the US dollar; and x402 is a protocol based on the HTTP '402 Payment Required' standard that allows applications and AI agents to make automated stablecoin payments for resources such as APIs and data.

The adoption of x402 has been rapid, with Chainalysis reporting over 100 million transactions in just nine months. The vast majority of these transactions involved amounts of at least one dollar, suggesting genuine service payments rather than test transactions or negligible transfers.