Coinbase is predicting an economy powered by AI stablecoins that will manage transactions autonomously, replacing traditional payment systems. Consumers and bots may use these tools embedded within online commerce, either consciously or subconsciously.
Stablecoins are strategically positioned to spearhead a new financial revolution, one that enables both humans and computers to perform transactions with unrestricted, instantaneous efficiency.
Vice President Shan Aggarwal at Coinbase sees stablecoins as more than a crypto advancement. In a recent post on X, he detailed his belief that these digital tokens could be the building blocks of the future economy and explained why the prevailing possibilities of such tokens are underestimated.
Aggarwal is quoted: “Crypto has four mass-market use cases today: store of value, trading, staking, and stablecoins. Store of value and trading have been around for over a decade. Staking went mainstream about five years ago. And we are only now seeing stablecoins take off.”
He observed that stablecoins are considered The Future of Global Payments as they are beginning to supplant legacy credit, debit, and banking networks. Stablecoins will become so entrenched in commerce that their use will be largely invisible.
Aggarwal has argued that the pairing of stablecoins with self-custodial wallets is a game-changer. He has called these self-custodial wallets “internet-native bank accounts that are open to everyone everywhere.” With self-custodial stablecoin wallets, the combination could unlock digital commerce for billions of people around the globe.
He also added, “We’ve also seen data that shows stablecoin payments attract new customers to merchants,” and this is helpful for people who were sidelined in the global economy.
Something that operates akin to machines is money
Aggarwal has a different approach as he is concentrating on bots. He conveyed to Crypto News, Coinbase is preparing to build the framework for money management AI apps and agents that will have the ability to manage funds autonomously.
Stablecoins are the native payment rails for AI agents, he argued. “Every AI agent should have a wallet and be able to hold, send, and receive stablecoins, especially USDC. This is the reason we are building the financial infrastructure for AI native apps and agents,” he justified.
“Stablecoins are increasingly the preferred currency for agentic commerce,” Coinbase’s chief technology officer, Manish Aggarwal, Manager, added that “AI agents need money that works like they do: programmable, 24/7, and internet-native.” With these capabilities, Coinbase foresees “a new kind of economy where bots and agents can transact, fund, and make autonomous decisions.”
What’s Next:
Aggarwal reports Coinbase is “actively exploring the intersection of crypto and AI,” even incorporating AI throughout Coinbase’s ecosystem. The company identifies “massive potential to unlock new use cases and new simplifications of interaction with the on-chain world.” Some of those projects include:
- Positioning Coinbase as the reference point for AI systems requiring monetary transactions involving a human agent and agent-to-agent interaction.
- Issuing a development platform via the Coinbase Developer Platform.
- Financing the new wave of crypto AI startups through Coinbase Ventures, which include Payman, Vana, and Skyfire.
- Aggarwal added two new projects for these initiatives, which include:
- Payments using HTTP with stablecoins: x402 Payment Protocol.
- Allowing the autonomous interaction with the blockchain via AI agents: AgentKit.
Outreach beyond crypto-focused audiences
Discussion about stablecoins has been concentrated in crypto circles, but Aggarwal thinks their actual impact will be more global in scope and more useful, especially in regions with underdeveloped, exclusionary, or dense financial systems.
“Stablecoins are critical to our mission of increasing economic freedom,” Aggarwal stated in an X post and went further to explain that their impact can help unlock access to “more open, fair, free, and transparent financial services (DeFi) globally, unencumbered by legacy financial systems.”
This would also assist small businesses, which operate mostly on cash, in digitizing their operations as well as automating payment processing using AI, which promotes a smoother and faster adoption.
Stablecoins will reach near ubiquity in about six years, according to Aggarwal. “Every person and business who uses the internet (and a huge contingent of those who currently don’t) will interact with stablecoins,” he predicted. In a crypto news outlet, he also stated that the exchange is actively exploring the intersection of crypto and AI, including by integrating AI across the Coinbase ecosystem.
