Brian Armstrong|Jul 26, 2026 22:17
"If you're in crypto, pivot to AI."
I used to hear versions of this, and it's the wrong way to think about the world. It's zero sum, scarcity thinking.
Crypto is a general purpose technology. It's infrastructure, the same way electricity or the internet is infrastructure. It doesn't compete with the next big thing, because it underpins it. It's an *and*, not an *or*.
AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto. If anything, it makes crypto more important.
AI agents will need their own financial infrastructure and will eventually transact far more per day than all humans combined. They can't open a bank account, they can't wait three days for a wire, they reside in one country. They need real time programmable money (and that's crypto).
Agents will need to hold funds and pay for things on their own. We pioneered this with the x402 protocol, Base, and USDC, which now power the vast majority of all agentic payments. Agents will also engage in trading and act as a financial advisor. They will raise or borrow money for new projects they are undertaking. They will eliminate tasks for us around tax planning, portfolio rebalancing, and bill pay.
Welcome to the world of Agentic Finance (AiFi). This is what Coinbase is building.(Brian Armstrong)
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