Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Coinbase Global
Brian Armstrong: "We're Bringing Every Asset Class On Chain"
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sits down with Sourcery for the company's System Update, the twice-yearly rundown of everything shipped in the prior six months. Armstrong walks through the "everything exchange," tokenized stocks, unified global liquidity, and a new class of AI products, including Coinbase Advisor, which the company describes as one of the first SEC-registered AI-powered investment advisors, where the agent itself holds the registration.
The conversation covers the agentic economy, why AI agents need crypto rails to pay each other, how Coinbase arbitraged its own AI token costs b...
About Brian Armstrong
Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, has been promoting the concept of an "agentic economy" where AI agents use cryptocurrency rails to transact autonomously. During Coinbase's System Update in June 2026, Armstrong announced the launch of tokenized stocks, unified global liquidity, and new AI products, including Coinbase Advisor, which he described as one of the first SEC-registered AI-powered investment advisors. He stated that Coinbase is "shipping about twice as much code year-over-year" and that the company aims to become a "primary financial account" for users, offering services such as crypto-backed mortgages and stablecoin payments. Armstrong also discussed the company's strategy of routing certain AI queries to cheaper open-source models, noting that these models are "99% cheaper" and could handle 80% of workloads. Armstrong has continued to advocate for regulatory clarity in the U.S., arguing that it would unlock institutional capital and encourage companies to integrate crypto. He responded to criticism from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who called him "full of s--t," by stating that he remains "a little perplexed" by the personal animosity. Armstrong also expressed bullishness on Bitcoin, calling it "the new digital gold," and discussed his views on AI and longevity, including his work at the biotech company NewLimit, which he co-founded to extend human life. He stated that he is "okay with the idea of AI superseding humanity" and emphasized that founders should focus on improving the world.
Transcript (85 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:00
Brian Armstrong, welcome to Sorcery.
B
Brian Armstrong0:02
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I
Interviewer0:03
What are we doing today? What is this?
B
Brian Armstrong0:05
This is the Coinbase system update. We do this twice a year to talk about everything we shipped in the prior 6 months, and we're executing faster than ever, largely because of AI. We're shipping about twice as much code year-over-year, and we're doing it with higher quality, fewer bugs. So, it's a really exciting time, and there's lots of things that we've been announcing today: tokenized stocks, unifying our global liquidity, a bunch of AI tools, and how we're going to bank the AI agents of the world.
I
Interviewer0:31
Let's touch on the AI one. I think for a long time people have been using these LLMs or AI agents to ask financial and investment-type questions, but they never had full context on your actual account. They couldn't take action on your account. So, we released something called Coinbase MCP. It basically allows any AI agent to connect to your Coinbase account, and you can talk to it in plain English, and it can trade on your behalf, but within guardrails that you set. But, beyond that, we're actually putting this AI technology right in the Coinbase app with Coinbase Advisor. It's a SEC-registered investment advisor, the AI agent itself, which is kind of a new thing. And lastly, we're really trying to provide financial accounts for the AI agents themselves, because increasingly, we're going to see this agentic economy form, where AI agents are paying for goods and services, they're hiring other agents on a team, and they need new financial infrastructure to pay for all these things, and we built the full stack at Coinbase.
So, yesterday in our interview, which will probably come out next week, you mentioned you now will be able to reach 4 billion more users. So, how do you reach 4 billion more users?
B
Brian Armstrong1:32
Yeah, well, there's 4 billion unbrokered people in the world who basically can't access high-quality investments like US stocks. A lot of times people have heard about the unbanked of the world or the underbanked. There is true, there actually are about billions and billions of people that are unbanked as well, but there's also the unbrokered. So, you can imagine if the average person didn't have access to high-quality investments, what does that mean? They just hold their money in cash, where it might erode some value, or they can put their money into low-quality investments. But what if these 4 billion people around the world could also own Nvidia or Coinbase stock? This would be a great democratizing force for the world and a good business.
I
Interviewer2:10
So you're building the everything exchange. What does that mean?
B
Brian Armstrong2:13
Well, we're bringing every asset class on chain to trade in one unified account with great liquidity and capital efficiency for traders. So I think people sometimes still think about Coinbase like 14 years ago when it got started as a place to buy and sell Bitcoin. And sometimes they're like, "Oh, Bitcoin's down." But we actually allow people to trade everything on Coinbase now: stocks, commodities, pre-IPO perps, prediction markets. And you can do it in one account with great liquidity and capital efficiency. So that's what we're building. And I think in any given moment, in any financial market, something's going to be up, something's going to be down. And what we try to do is put good information in front of customers so they can know what trades to make in any given time, and help meet their financial goals.
I
Interviewer2:56
So I interviewed Cathie not too long ago, and she said that pressure makes diamond hands. So what is it like operating through the cycles, and how does AI help that?
B
Brian Armstrong3:08
Yeah, well we're used to this at this point. I mean, you have to remember I grew up in 2012 where Bitcoin was like five or 10 dollars. I've been through four cycles in crypto. And again, people still think of it as crypto broadly. It's really just the core Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana. Again, now there's stablecoin payments growing like crazy even in this winter, so-called. Prediction markets are growing like crazy. Derivatives are growing like crazy. The agentic infrastructure is growing really well. So there's actually like I think Coinbase does our best work in down markets because we're in it for the long haul. Other people are tourists, they get distracted, they deprioritize what they're doing. We just get more work done and sets us up really well for the next bull run.
I
Interviewer3:50
Okay, this is going to be the most difficult question. Are you ready?
B
Brian Armstrong3:53
Yeah.
I
Interviewer3:54
What's your hottest take?
B
Brian Armstrong3:56
Of the day?
I
Interviewer3:56
In general.
B
Brian Armstrong3:57
In life? Okay. Well, let's see. I think that people are underestimating still the potential of the agentic economy, right? I think there's going to be a world here soon where there's more AI agents than humans doing work in the economy. Some point we'll have humanoid robots in the mix on that, too. And if you think about AI as programmable intelligence and labor, and crypto is programmable money and markets, these things are actually perfectly complementary to create this new agentic economy because how are AI agents going to hire each other and pay each other? They oftentimes have to do very frequent very small transactions. They need to breeze through paywalls. They can't fill out a CAPTCHA. They can't open their bank account for themselves. They're going to need new financial infrastructure to make this really efficient, and that's what Coinbase has built now with the full stack. We've got USDC, a trusted stablecoin. We've got the base chain. We've got great payment APIs and self-custodial wallets. And we've got X402, which is an open standard we created for agentic payments. And so, right now it's the leader in agentic commerce. Base, USDC, X402 are leading.
I
Interviewer5:09
How many AI agents do you guys currently have?
B
Brian Armstrong5:11
Well, so it depends how you count it. I mean, if you're talking about full-time equivalent, on any given employee might be working with a dozen or more agents, right? So, it should in theory be like this big multiple. You could argue it's in the hundreds of thousands of agents. If you now take it to say, well, equivalent of a 40-hour work week, it's probably in the thousands right now. I think we'll be probably by the end of this year we'll have more full-time agents working than humans. And of course, that's just allowing the human employees to get even more work done. I'm not really a believer in this idea that it's going to take away jobs. I think that AI takes away tasks and toil, and it allows people to just get even more work done. So, it's a bright future.
I
Interviewer5:51
You went into this a bit further in our interview, but you were able to arbitrage the costs of token maxing. So, how did you figure that out and what are you guys doing to set that off?
B
Brian Armstrong6:04
Yeah, well, I think at this point Coinbase is one of the most AI enabled companies in the world, and what we saw is that like many companies, their token budget was going up exponentially. But, what we did is we actually put some relatively simple changes in place to route certain queries prompts to more inexpensive models. These open-source models are 3 to 6 months behind, and they're 99% cheaper. Okay, so I think we're going to be in a world here quickly where like 80% of the workload could actually go to 99% cheaper models. And then for the top 20%, they can still go route to the most frontier model, you know, IQ maxing or whatever you want to call it. And even with some other simple things we did like just caching queries and setting reasonable defaults, that allowed us to have our token usage continue to grow exponentially, but our cost curve has really started to flatten. And that's really good. Our CFO loves that, but I think it's good for the world, too, because it just means that the prices are going to fall much faster than Moore's Law even, like one of the prior technology trends. I think it's going to be even more dramatic.
I
Interviewer7:07
Amazing. Okay, so to close out on a quick, happy, positive note, what are you most excited about today?
B
Brian Armstrong7:14
Well, there's so many things. I think the tokenized stocks are a great democratizing force. We talked about that. Pooling our global liquidity, which, you know, 80% of crypto trading has been in derivatives and perpetual futures that have moved offshore. Now with this approval we've gotten in the US, we can actually start to unify the US and international, bring a lot of this activity back on shore in a legitimate way, something I think only Coinbase can do. And then the agentic infrastructure for financial services. I think that's a super exciting opportunity.
I
Interviewer7:40
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Brian. Congrats on the big day.
B
Brian Armstrong7:43
Thank you.
I
Interviewer7:48
Kat, welcome to sorcery.
K
Kat7:50
Thank you for having me, Molly. I'm a huge fan.
I
Interviewer7:52
Oh, I'm a huge fan.
K
Kat7:53
Thank you.
I
Interviewer7:54
So, you're the CMO of Coinbase. Yesterday, I interviewed Brian, and he mentioned you're now going to be able to access 4 billion new users. So, what is the strategy there?
K
Kat8:06
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty lofty, but I think we can do it. I think the next tranche of users can really be everyone and anyone who's looking for a better financial system. And what's cool is that it's not really about one thing anymore, right? It's about earning more on your money, making better payments, getting a better loan that's backed by crypto, right? The possibilities are endless for the stage that Coinbase is at, and we're really ready to make sure that Coinbase is the home for all of your finances, no matter what category they're in.
I
Interviewer8:37
Since you're in charge of the vibes over here and making sure the brand is on top, how do you manage marketing and vibes through booms and busts?
K
Kat8:48
Yeah, I mean, I think we're all pretty used to the cyclical nature of crypto at this point, but I think what's really interesting about working at Coinbase is that it's actually quite culturally embedded in the company. So, you might be surprised to hear, but believe it or not, our executives, they talk about how they prefer to operate through winters, right? And I think that kind of goes back to a little bit of that grit that's embedded in Coinbase, but it really allows us to focus quite a bit more. And so, there are benefits to it. And I think from a marketing perspective, sometimes when you really got to batten down the hatches, it can actually breed some really cool creative. And so, I love being able to basically use those constraints to breed more creativity, and just keep in mind that crypto isn't all about prices, right? It's for the long.
I
Interviewer9:32
I think you said a really good line before about pressure. What was that?
K
Kat9:35
That's right. I did. I said that pressure builds diamond hands.
I
Interviewer9:39
Wow. We could even just end this there. That's a great one.
K
Kat9:43
We should.
I
Interviewer9:44
So, what are the biggest misconceptions about crypto today?
K
Kat9:48
Okay. I think probably one of the biggest misconceptions is that crypto is down, down, down, right? I mean, there might be some elements that have been higher, but you're looking at things like stablecoins and prediction markets that are literally reaching all-time highs.
I
Interviewer10:00
And so, with that, how do you stay... I mean, you guys have been crushing it. I actually tweeted about this because I've been taking note. You guys have been crushing it lately with your creative. So, how do you remain relevant for the next generation?
K
Kat10:14
Well, I think luckily Coinbase is really built for the next generation, right? And the next generation doesn't want to use the same old stodgy financial institutions that their grandparents use, right? So, these people were raised on the internet, literally, and Coinbase was built, finance built for the internet.
I
Interviewer10:30
I know I have a couple of my favorite campaigns that you guys have done, but what are some of yours? Or what are the biggest... It could not even be a campaign. It could be like I don't know, someone who manages your social media.
K
Kat10:42
Well, yeah, we love our social media here. I mean, you might have seen some of the really cool memes that have been coming out each earnings quarter. There was one that went pretty viral with Subway Surfers that landed quite well, and I'm hoping that different audiences in the financial world also enjoyed it as much, and I think they did. And obviously, we had a recent huge ad campaign about an NPC. We call it Your Way Out. It's sort of the kickoff to our new brand campaign platform. And we love that work. I think it just really taps into sort of that palpable dissatisfaction that people have with the system.
I
Interviewer11:11
So, you came from Cash App. What are some of the biggest lessons that you learned there that carry into Coinbase?
K
Kat11:16
Yeah, a great question. I mean, I think both brands are super digital-first, not afraid to take risks, and really understand how to meet the customer where they are. I think there's also something to both brands that they really understand like playing into culture and speaking to culture and also sometimes unearthing and raising some of those just kind of palpable dissatisfactions that are bubbling beneath the surface and then poking at those and exposing those to see how people will react and I think that really hits well with the younger generation.
I
Interviewer11:50
All right. Last question I have to ask. Kat, what is your hottest take right now?
K
Kat11:55
Okay, hottest take. You can't buy Aura.
I
Interviewer11:58
Damn. That's pretty good.
K
Kat12:04
Thank you for that.
I
Interviewer12:06
Yeah, wow. That's good.
K
Kat12:08
Pretty good.
I
Interviewer12:08
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Congrats on your big day.
K
Kat12:11
Thank you. Yeah, so glad that you're here. Thanks.
I
Interviewer12:17
We have an exclusive here today. We're with Molly.
M
Molly12:20
Hi Molly.
I
Interviewer12:21
Hi Molly. So, we're going to talk legal. All right? So, I want to know what is it like working with Brian in such a regulatory environment?
M
Molly12:34
I have to say I love working with founders and Brian is the absolute best. One of the things I really appreciate, but it's not for everyone, is that he really wants to understand where the rule comes from. He wants to read the rule himself and he wants to understand the why behind it. How many people have sat down and looked at the Commodities Exchange Act, but their CEO has done it many times and I think that's so cool. But you really have to deeply understand the rule itself and welcome challenging assumptions, which is great.
I
Interviewer13:05
Yesterday before the interview with Brian I did the sit down, we were talking about some of the product releases and the tokenized stocks and one thing that you mentioned to me is we don't f around. So, can you explain more about that?
M
Molly13:17
Yes. I am so proud of this launch and so proud of the way our company approached this launch because we really did it with this customer first mindset of we want to do this the right way. So many companies have launched various derivative products or debt securities. These are real deal securities. This is the real thing. It's the hard way to do it, but people were really determined to do what was best for our customers. So we took the hard path and I think that people are really going to be delighted by the product.
I
Interviewer13:43
What's been the coolest product for you to work on? Obviously, you guys have created new categories across the board. So what is the coolest thing that you've worked on?
M
Molly13:52
It's really hard to pick. I think I'd probably say USDC and stablecoins. USDC was formed by Coinbase and Circle. It was actually a joint venture back in the day. I served on its board and then we did a new commercial partnership to replace that JV instead. And it's just been so cool to see how that product has taken off. Circle has been super successful. USDC has continued to grow and it's just really expanded the payments opportunity as the next killer app for crypto.
I
Interviewer14:21
What do you think the biggest misconception is for working in such a regulated environment?
M
Molly14:27
That it's all rules and no fun. I think that one of the really cool things about working in such a regulated but also changing environment is we're also building the rules. They're changing with the technology and we're able to really create new pathways and that's what's really exciting. You have to love uncertainty. If you're looking to advise on something that exists, this is not for you, but this is really fun.
I
Interviewer14:51
Would you advise more companies to sue the government?
M
Molly14:54
Well, hopefully you have a government that is willing to work with you. And I have to say the current SEC and CFTC have had such amazing open doors and really want to do right by customers, right by the companies in the US and I have never been more excited about crypto.
I
Interviewer15:10
So how does AI change legal over the next decade? I've heard that you token max typically by Tuesday.
M
Molly15:17
I do. About Tuesday midday, I hit my token warning and I think that it's not a question the next decade. I think it's a question of the next 10 months at best, maybe 10 weeks. Things are changing so unbelievably quickly, and I'm trying to replace some of my superpowers and skills with AI. One of my superpowers is drafting great documents, and I have completely delegated this to my agents at this point, and I am just so excited not only by how Coinbase is approaching using agents, using AI in our day-to-day work, but also bringing that power to our customers with some of the products that we are announcing today.
I
Interviewer15:55
So, lastly, you've said that great legal leaders are business leaders first. What does that mean?
M
Molly16:02
At the end of the day, you can get legal advice and learn about the rules from a lot of people. I think a great legal leader is someone who is a business leader who happens to bring that legal toolkit, who can use that as an advantage in terms of helping a company and a leadership team strategize. And so, at the end of the day, our goal is to ship great products and unlock economic freedom for the world, and so that's my mission, and I can use legal tools to help the company achieve that.
I
Interviewer16:30
Molly, thank you so much. I'm very excited to see what else you cook up next.
M
Molly16:34
Thanks, Molly.
I
Interviewer16:35
Cool.
Today, we have Jesse. Jesse, welcome to Sorcery.
J
Jesse16:43
Thanks for being here.
I
Interviewer16:44
What is your hottest take right now with Base?
J
Jesse16:46
My hottest take right now with Base, I think that Base is going to be the biggest blockchain in the world over the next 5 years. I don't know if that's a hot take, but it's a pretty good one.
I
Interviewer16:54
It's a pretty good take.
J
Jesse16:56
Why is that going to happen? You know, I think what we're seeing is that across trading, payments, and agents, we're starting to see exponential take off in terms of the use cases that enterprises are adopting, and in terms of the early stage innovation that's happening in terms of what builders are building. And so, those things are coming together with the Coinbase liquidity that they kind of seeded the network with, with the brand, with the technology stack that we built. I think it's basically making it the perfect place for the next phase of the global economy.
I
Interviewer17:25
What's been the biggest challenge so far?
J
Jesse17:27
The biggest challenge with base, I'd say one of the hardest challenges has been figuring out how do you build a decentralized blockchain inside of a big centralized public company? That's not easy and if you look at the track record of other folks doing that, no one else has done that and then some people are trying to do it right now, but they're just getting started after us being three or four years in. And so kind of being on the edge there and figuring out how do we actually manage the regulatory side? How do we manage the ecosystem side? So it feels like Coinbase is one player among many in building this entire decentralized economy. That's been a real challenge, but I also think it's our biggest opportunity where base has this very unique upside of having the trust that comes with Coinbase and the expertise that comes with Coinbase, having the distribution that comes with Coinbase, but then also having this incredibly rich decentralized ecosystem that I think everyone's starting to participate in. And one of the things that has made all this possible is Brian. Having a visionary founder CEO who so deeply believes in and has basically been willing to go to bat at every single point to say, "We are going to build the blockchain for global finance and we're going to decentralize it and we're going to make it something that everyone can benefit from." That has been the thing that has enabled us to then go work through every single hard decision and make base the best possible place it can be.
I
Interviewer18:45
You mentioned a couple use cases, but what is the biggest use case for base that you're most pumped about? Where are you going to get the most impact?
J
Jesse18:52
Yeah, it's trading, payments, and agents, but maybe just to make those concrete. On the trading side, we're basically seeing every asset in the world get tokenized on base and that's leading to tons of trading on base. So I don't know if you know, but base is actually the largest blockchain in the world for spot Bitcoin, Ethereum and crypto major trading. That's a big milestone. We're launching tokenized equities today. That means that tokenized stocks are going to be trading on base, and I think that market's going to grow really quickly. On the payments front, I think the place we're seeing product market fit is really the business payment side, where businesses are seeing, "Oh, wow, we can do the things that used to take us days and cost dollars now in seconds and cents." And that is just leading to this insane growth curve, where everyone is replacing their legacy financial stack with stable coins, and they're doing it on base. And then on agents, we're seeing just this emerging bubbling economy of real agents doing real things on base. We have Venice, which is serving millions of users, Private Inference, and then they're also tokenizing their inference and letting people build all this kind of crazy financial infrastructure on it. You have Banker, that's let agents earn like $30 million of revenue by tokenizing themselves and then building their businesses around it. And I think that kind of taking of AI and combining it with programmable money and software on base is again accelerating really quickly.
I
Interviewer20:11
Damn. All right. Well, and we're about to get kicked out. But thank you so much, Jesse. And congrats on everything. Excited for the launches today.
J
Jesse20:20
Yeah, thanks for being here.
I
Interviewer20:21
Wow!