Coinbase CEO: AI Agents Will Drive Demand for Blockchain-Based Financial Services
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong argues that AI agents will drive demand for blockchain-based financial services. He claims that traditional banking rails are unsuitable for machine-to-machine transactions and that autonomous AI agents need programmable money to operate.
Armstrong's argument centers on agentic finance, which he calls AiFi. He believes it is the next major use case for crypto infrastructure.
Coinbase launched Base in 2023 as an Ethereum layer-2 network designed as general-purpose blockchain infrastructure. However, it has since become the primary platform for agentic transaction activity within Coinbase's ecosystem.
Chainalysis reported that agentic payments on Base through x402 surpassed 100 million transactions within roughly nine months of activity.