Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong criticizes crypto startups that rebrand to AI

Brian Armstrong, CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), pushed back against the growing trend of crypto companies abandoning blockchain technology to rebrand as artificial intelligence firms.

“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,” Armstrong wrote in a Sunday post on X, calling the trend “zero-sum, scarcity thinking.” Instead, he argued that crypto is general-purpose infrastructure, like electricity or the internet, that underpins the next big thing rather than competing with it. “It’s an ‘and,’ not an ‘or.'”

In an April article titled “AI Mania: The Reruns Have Started,” The Wall Street Journal showed how corporate pivots to AI mirror the dot-com boom at the turn of the century and the 2017 blockchain craze. Historical data show that companies adding trendy buzzwords to their names often see an average short-term stock pump of over 50%, suggesting these shifts are driven by market hype rather than structural business changes.

Armstrong and others say autonomous software agents will eventually execute far more daily transactions than humans. Because digital programs cannot open bank accounts or wait days for wire transfers, real-time crypto and blockchain represent the only alternative.

In his post, Armstrong said Coinbase plans to anchor this ecosystem, which he dubbed Agentic Finance (AiFi). The crypto trading platform is using the x402 protocol, which it developed and is now governed by the x402 Foundation, along with its Base blockchain and Circle Internet’s USDC stablecoin to power these automated payments. Coinbase deployed AI agent accounts that can trade and spend in June. Last week, it said Coinbase Business users would be able to accept AI agent payments via x402.

However, industry builders note that moving money at machine speed requires fixing structural bottlenecks across the entire tech stack.

“Agents don’t just need money, but they need money that moves at machine speed,” said Tory Green, CEO of decentralized network io.net, on Monday in a comment on Armstrong’s post. “Our whole financial stack has evolved for the human interface. Money’s just the first rail that has to catch up. Same story coming for compute, data, all of it.”

Other developers warn that giving unvetted code direct access to financial assets exposes it to massive counterparty risk.

“Building the rails is cool, but giving an agent capital without a track record is wild,” decentralized software project NeoSoul AI commented on X . “The transition from agentic payments to an agentic economy needs a missing layer: reputation and memory. You can’t trust a blank slate with a crypto wallet.”