Coinbase CEO Warns Against Crypto Startups Abandoning Their Roots for AI

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has come out against crypto startups abandoning their focus on cryptocurrency for artificial intelligence, arguing that AI will actually make crypto infrastructure more useful rather than replace it.

Armstrong said in a recent post that some startups are adopting 'zero sum, scarcity thinking' by assuming that AI and crypto must compete with each other. He argued that crypto should be viewed as a general-purpose technology like electricity or the internet, rather than a direct competitor to AI.

Several crypto companies have indeed shifted their focus towards AI in recent times. For example, Crusoe, a cloud-computing company with roots in Bitcoin mining, sold its mining business in 2025 to NYDIG, a Bitcoin-focused financial services firm, as it shifted toward AI infrastructure.

However, Armstrong believes that autonomous AI programs will eventually need to hold money and borrow funds without opening conventional bank accounts or waiting for bank transfers. To address this, Coinbase has developed x402, an open payment protocol for software to pay automatically for data, computing power and other services.