Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pushed back Sunday against calls for crypto to pivot to artificial intelligence, instead forecasting that AI agents will accelerate demand for blockchain-based financial services. His comments land as agentic payment activity on the firm's Base network topped 100 million transactions in roughly nine months, according to Chainalysis data reported in June.
Armstrong: AI makes crypto more important
"AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto," Armstrong wrote on X, "because AI agents will need programmable money rather than traditional banking rails. If anything, it makes crypto more important." The remarks counter a narrative that the crypto industry should reorient toward AI as a primary growth driver. Armstrong framed the two trends as complementary, with autonomous systems requiring onchain settlement infrastructure.
Coinbase's agentic finance stack
Coinbase launched Base in 2023 as a general-purpose Ethereum layer-2 network. Two years later it introduced x402, a payment protocol built on the HTTP "402 Payment Required" standard that lets software applications - including AI agents - settle in stablecoins without traditional accounts or checkout flows. The dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC, launched by Circle and Coinbase-backed Centre Consortium in 2018, serves as one of the primary settlement assets for x402 transactions. Base, x402 and USDC now form the core of what Armstrong calls agentic finance.
The milestone on Base highlights how AI Agents & Automation are already altering financial infrastructure, with software agents increasingly capable of initiating and settling transactions without human oversight.
100 million agentic payments, and what they look like
Chainalysis identified x402-related payment flows onchain and found that agentic wallets typically held smaller balances than average Base users but carried a wider variety of asset types. Transactions worth at least $1 accounted for 95% of total value transferred. The analytics firm noted that agentic payment wallets were generally newer than the broader Base user base.
For teams working in AI for Finance, the data suggests that autonomous payment systems are moving beyond experimentation into measurable scale.
Earnings report this week
Coinbase is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on Thursday. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance project revenue of $1.29 billion, a 13.8% decline from the same period last year, and expect earnings per share to remain flat.
Why this matters for finance professionals
The 100-million-transaction milestone marks a tangible shift in how value moves through digital networks. For finance professionals, agentic payments mean treasury, payments and settlement workflows may soon interact with autonomous software - not just human counterparties. The infrastructure choices companies make today for stablecoin settlement and programmatic rails could define their competitive position as AI agents become a larger share of transaction volume.
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