The rapid rise of AI agents is beginning to reshape the way payments are made online, and crypto infrastructure seems like a natural fit, according to Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak.
“What was almost impossible nine months ago is now entirely possible,” Pollak said in an interview with CoinDesk, highlighting the accelerating capabilities of autonomous AI systems. As these agents evolve, one need becomes clear: they need native ways to transact.
“Agents are defined in software and operating software, they want money as software,” said Pollak, who will speak at Consensus Miami 2026 next month.
This development is fueling interest in “agent payments,” in which AI systems can autonomously pay for services such as data access, computing or travel reservations.
Pollak said he hopes a key part of that stack will be x402, an open-source payments protocol that Coinbase and collaborators like Microsoft, Google and Mastercard have developed, which enables on-demand API payments without a subscription or traditional billing system.
Instead of relying on existing rails, blockchain-based payments allow agents to “make a single API call or a smart contract call and move money globally, instantly, essentially for free,” Pollak said.
A first traction is already visible. According to Pollak, approximately $48 million in payment volume has flowed through X402 so far, with approximately 95% of transactions occurring on Base, the layer 2 Ethereum network founded by Pollak and incubated by Coinbase. The ecosystem is also growing rapidly, with integrations spanning AI providers, data platforms and travel services that agents can access directly.
Pollak said the long-term vision is to create an open marketplace of services that agents can access programmatically, without running into paywalls or requiring human intervention. “You want agents to be able to go wild,” he said, describing a system in which software can seamlessly discover, purchase and use digital services in real time.
As fully autonomous “zero-human” companies begin to emerge, Pollak said the biggest change in the short term will come from people augmenting themselves with AI.
“Top performers are now using agents to become even more successful,” he said, describing workflows powered by multiple parallel AI systems.
For crypto, the broader challenge remains adoption. Pollak argued that the solution lies not in better marketing, but in invisibility.
“It will be a lot easier to sell cryptocurrencies when you don’t have to tell people about it, they will just experience it,” he said.
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