Armstrong backs agentic finance as Base hits 100M payments

Brian Armstrong wrote on X that AI agents will increase demand for crypto and highlighted Coinbase’s Base network, the USDC stablecoin and the x402 payment protocol as infrastructure for automated machine-to-machine payments. He wrote, “AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto. If anything, it makes crypto more important.”

Chainalysis reported in June that agentic payments on Base via x402 surpassed 100 million transactions within roughly nine months of activity. The analytics firm identified x402-related payment flows onchain and found transactions worth at least $1 accounted for about 95% of the total value transferred. Chainalysis also found that wallets used for agentic payments were typically newer, held a wider mix of assets and carried smaller balances than the average Base user.

Coinbase launched Base in 2023 as an Ethereum layer-2 network intended to make onchain applications faster and cheaper. The company later introduced x402, a protocol modeled on the HTTP “402 Payment Required” standard to enable automated stablecoin payments between software applications. x402 is designed to let software agents pay for digital resources such as APIs and data without traditional accounts or manual checkout flows. USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin managed by Circle and the Centre Consortium, is one of the assets used in x402 transactions.

Armstrong’s post comes ahead of Coinbase’s second-quarter earnings report, scheduled for Thursday. Analysts expect revenue of about $1.29 billion for the quarter, a decline of roughly 13.8% from the same period last year, and flat earnings per share.

Base was built as general-purpose blockchain infrastructure rather than specifically for AI payments. Coinbase and other crypto firms have positioned blockchain networks as payment rails for software agents, saying programmable stablecoins and onchain payment protocols enable automated systems to buy and consume digital services.