Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak says AI agents are the next big wave for crypto payments

Pollak, who will be speaking at Consensus Miami 2026 next month, also sees the open-source protocol x402 as a key part of that wave. What to know : AI agents are rapidly gaining autonomy and increasingly need native, programmable payment systems, positioning crypto rails like Base and standards like x402 as core infrastructure for “agentic commerce,” said Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak in an interview. Pollak’s broader thesis is that crypto adoption will come not from hype, but from invisible integration, as agents (and humans using them) seamlessly transact in the background without realizing they’re using blockchain.