Coinbase bets on agentic finance as Base payments cross 100M

Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong has argued that artificial intelligence will increase demand for crypto rather than replace it. Summary Armstrong says AI agents will increase crypto demand by using programmable money for autonomous transactions. Chainalysis counted over 100 million x402 payments on Base, though meme-coin farming drove early growth. Coinbase combines Base, USDC, x402 and agent wallets to build its agentic finance payment stack. In a July 27 post on X, he described Base, USDC and the x402 payment standard as the core of Coinbase’s “Agentic Finance,” or AiFi, strategy. Armstrong wrote that “AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto” and said AI agents would eventually complete more daily transactions than all people combined. The forecast has no set timeline. Current data shows growing x402 activity, but it does not prove that autonomous agents already exceed human payment use. Armstrong links AI growth to programmable money Armstrong rejected calls for crypto companies to pivot away from blockchain and focus only on AI. He said AI agents need programmable money because traditional bank accounts, cards and checkout pages depend on human identity che...