Coinbase's Armstrong Sees AI Fueling Crypto Demand
Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong is countering calls for cryptocurrency to pivot towards artificial intelligence by arguing that AI agents will instead drive up demand for crypto-based financial services.
Armstrong, citing Coinbase's Base network as an example, believes that agentic finance (AiFi) will become a key trend in the industry. He points out that AI agents will require programmable money rather than traditional banking rails, which makes cryptocurrency more important.
The concept of AiFi centers around machine-to-machine payments without human intervention, and Coinbase's infrastructure for this includes its Base network, x402 payment protocol, and $USDC stablecoin. The latter allows software agents to make automated transactions using the dollar-pegged asset.
In June, Chainalysis reported that agentic payments on Base via x402 surpassed 100 million transactions within roughly nine months of activity. This growth is attributed to newer users with smaller balances holding more asset types than average Base users.