Coinbase CEO says AI agents could spark next wave of crypto payment growth

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has argued that AI agents, which cannot meet banks' identity checks, are structurally better suited to non-KYC crypto wallets for executing autonomous transactions. He and Binance's former CEO Changpeng Zhao see this shift as a potential driver of a new crypto payment cycle, with projects like Kite rallying sharply in the ongoing 2026 market amid growing attention on AI models such as Alibaba's ROME.