In brief
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pushed back on advice for crypto firms to "pivot to AI," calling it "zero sum, scarcity thinking."
He argued crypto is infrastructure that underpins AI rather than competing with it, and that AI agents will need "real time programmable money" to transact.
Armstrong branded the vision "Agentic Finance," or AiFi—months after Coinbase cut 14% of staff to become "AI-native."
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pushed back on the idea that crypto companies should "pivot to AI," calling the advice a case of "zero sum, scarcity thinking" in a tweet.Crypto is a general-purpose technology, he argued—"infrastructure, the same way electricity or the internet is"—that doesn't compete with the next big thing "because it underpins it." The AI "megatrend" doesn't detract from crypto, he said, arguing that it "makes crypto more important."
