Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong touts AiFi as x402 tops 100 million transactions

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said crypto will become more important as AI expands because autonomous agents will need programmable money to transact online without relying on conventional bank accounts or payment rails. In a July 26 post on X, he rejected the idea that AI diminishes crypto’s relevance and said Coinbase refers to the convergence of AI and crypto as “Agentic Finance,” or AiFi. He pointed to USDC, Base and x402 as the core of Coinbase’s current agentic payments infrastructure and said AI systems will need to earn, hold and spend money in real time. Armstrong said AI agents could eventually complete more daily transactions than humans as they pay for data, computing power and digital services, trade assets, rebalance portfolios, settle bills and help manage taxes. He said traditional banking systems were not built for software operating around the clock and that “They need real-time programmable money.” He also said Coinbase’s tools already power most agent-driven payments, though he did not provide figures in the post. Base, launched in 2023 as an Ethereum layer-2 network, has become the main platform for agentic transaction activity in Coinbase’s ecosystem. Coinbase introduced x402 in 2025 as a payment protocol based on the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” standard, designed to let AI agents and other software systems pay for APIs, data feeds and other digital resources without traditional accounts or manual checkout. USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin co-launched by Circle and the Coinbase-backed Centre Consortium in 2018, is the primary asset used for x402 transactions. Coinbase is also expanding the broader stack around AiFi. The company recently rolled out AI agent payments for businesses in USDC via Coinbase Business and has highlighted tools including Agentkit, Coinbase for Agents and onchain identity standards to help autonomous programs transact within user-defined limits. Chainalysis said in June that agentic payments on Base through x402 surpassed 100 million transactions in roughly nine months. The vision remains early, with security, accountability and regulation still unresolved.