Sep 10, 2026 · 45m · no-priors
Coinbase’s Everything Exchange: Agentic Finance, Stablecoins & Tokenization with CEO Brian Armstrong
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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong joins Elad Gil on No Priors to discuss building financial infrastructure for the autonomous agentic economy, internal AI engineering workflows, and his biotechnology venture, New Limit, aimed at reversing cellular aging.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 20.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 0.9 The hosts pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:08 Rejecting Gene Editing Homogenization
Brian directly rejects Elad's hypothesis that cognitive gene editing will reduce human diversity, insisting that diverse parental preferences will result in radical phenotypic divergence.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 39:15 Challenging Neurodiversity Risks in Gene EditingElad actively challenges Brian's optimistic outlook on embryo editing, questioning whether standardized intelligence packages will homogenize human cognition like a 'Ford Model T.'
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:47 Card Rails vs Microtransaction RealitiesBrian educates Elad on why traditional credit rails fail for agentic commerce, explaining that flat 30-cent card fees cannot support the 76% of agent transactions that cost under 30 cents.
The host holds their own ▶ 34:30 Explaining Yamanaka Factors and Tissue RegenerationElad demonstrates his molecular biology background by explaining how Yamanaka factors decouple aging from cell identity and detailing the physiology of age-dependent tissue regeneration.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expanding the Core: The Everything Exchange and Agentic Finance | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Elad frames the conversation around Coinbase's evolution into an 'everything exchange' and a global payments layer. Brian explains the convergence of asset classes, stablecoins, and agentic finance in a collaborative opening overview. | |
| Autonomous Wallets, Protocols, and Enabling Agentic Commerce | 5 | 5 | 0 | 2 | Elad presses Brian on account structures and the volume split between crypto and traditional payment rails. Brian provides detailed industry metrics, explaining that flat 30-cent card fees are unviable when 76% of agent transactions are under 30 cents. | |
| Scarcity in a Post-Money World and the AI-Crypto Intersection | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Elad observes how MIT computer science graduates bifurcated into crypto or AI cohorts depending on graduation year. Brian politely dissents from Elon Musk's prediction of a post-money society, emphasizing persistent scarcity in physical resources like land and energy. | |
| Recursive Self-Improvement and Internal AI at Coinbase | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Elad prompts Brian on internal AI tooling at Coinbase. Brian details their engineering methodology, explaining how team and repository 'brains' create recursive self-improvement cycles when PR corrections are fed back into context files. | |
| Hands-On CEO Engineering with Toshi and Multi-Agent Harnesses | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Elad compares AI workflows to gaming progression and questions whether organizations will shrink to small 10-person teams. Brian gently reframes the premise, arguing that AI eliminates discrete tasks rather than headcount, accelerating organizational output. | |
| Asset Tokenization and Expanding Beyond Bitcoin | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Elad references his early investment in Harbour tokenizing real estate and discusses international parallel structures like Hong Kong funds. Brian shares that 88% of Coinbase revenue is non-Bitcoin and outlines their tokenized stock launch. | |
| Evolution of Prediction Markets from Sports to Societal Policy | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Elad asks about the expansion of prediction markets beyond sports and politics. Brian reveals Coinbase's prediction business reached a $100M revenue run-rate within months and describes future policy and open-ended philosophical betting markets. | |
| Launching New Limit: From Longevity Dinners to Epigenetic Reprogramming | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Brian discusses founding New Limit while running Coinbase, recounting how Elad's skepticism of longevity snake oil prompted private salon dinners where scientists identified epigenetic reprogramming as a viable frontier. | |
| High-Throughput Wet Labs and the Multi-Company Founder Model | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Brian describes New Limit's pipeline combining AI frontier models with large-scale wet-lab pooled screens. Elad and Brian discuss how serial founders like Daniel Ek and Elon Musk effectively transition into multi-venture capital allocators. | |
| Cellular Targets: From Alcoholic Liver Disease to Systemic Rejuvenation | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Brian details New Limit's clinical focus on hepatocytes for alcoholic liver disease before expanding to systemic rejuvenation. Elad demonstrates deep scientific expertise by elaborating on Yamanaka factor mechanisms and physiological tissue regeneration kinetics. | |
| Civilizational Progress, Crypto Adoption, and Cognitive Enhancement | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Brian emphasizes building over critique and outlines his five-year focus on agentic crypto adoption alongside speculative interest in biological and digital cognitive enhancement. | |
| Gene Editing Ethics, Disease Prevention, and Human Diversity | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Elad pushes back against widespread gene editing, warning that commercial enhancement packages might create a standardized 'Model T' of intelligence that erodes human neurodiversity. Brian explicitly counters that parental preferences will foster even greater divergence. | |
| Accelerating Progress Through Special Economic Zones and US Freedom Cities | 6 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Elad asks about the crypto community's interest in Special Economic Zones, citing Shenzhen and the Philippines. Brian explains investments in Prospera and advocates for domestic federal 'Freedom Cities' to serve as sandboxes free from EPA and FAA red tape. |
Statements from this episode (32)
Armstrong: Stablecoin payment volume continues growing during Bitcoin downturns
“Even when Bitcoin prices are down, stablecoin payments just keep growing.”
Armstrong: Stablecoin payments settle under one second for under one cent
“You can send money at the speed of information, right? It's kind of like under one second, under one cent us to move money anywhere in the world.”
Armstrong: Coinbase built tools allowing AI agents to open crypto-rail accounts
“And so we've made some simple tools where with a single Command. You just prompt, you paste it into your AI agent. It can now have its own financial account and it's using a self custodial wallet and crypto rails.”
Armstrong: Coinbase will support segregated accounts for AI agents
“It's going to be possible to create a separate agentic account with segregated funds on Coinbase in the near future. And you can give your agent access to just that to do trading and payments on your behalf. That's kind of linked to your identity as human.”
Armstrong: AI agents will need spend accounts and stablecoin credit cards
“And in the future, I think you're going to want to have these agents have their own spend accounts, kind of like having a personal assistant or an employee who has their own spend account. It's going to need probably like a stablecoin-backed credit card for ba…”
Armstrong: Coinbase contributed x402 to Linux Foundation with Google and AWS
“We're seeing a lot of agentic payment now flow over these new protocols, like x-for-o-two, which is one that we incubated at Coinbase that we actually put into the Linux foundation. So Google and Cloudflare and AWS, a bunch of people are working with us on tha…”
Armstrong: 76% of agentic commerce transactions are under 30 cents
“And I believe the stats we last saw on this are that about like 76% of the agentic The commerce transactions we're seeing are under 30 cents.”
Armstrong predicts AI agents will outnumber humans in near future
“I, there'll be more agents than humans in the not too distant future.”
Armstrong: The agentic economy will surpass the human economy
“It kind of stands to reason that the agentic economy will be bigger than the human economy at some point in the not too distant future as well.”
Armstrong: Society will still need money because scarce resources will endure
“I think in the end, like in the limit case, like he has a point, but the thing is there's going to be scarcity for a long time. Even if the cost of goods and services really falls, like we have price deflation because robots and AI start to just make commoditi…”
Armstrong: Coinbase staff should take their personal AI brains when leaving
“You can have a brain for each individual, which, by the way, I believe they should be able to take with them when they leave Coinbase. So we're creating some good policies on that.”
Armstrong: Coinbase's internal AI harness can autonomously pay external vendors
“You know, it can now make calls out to external vendors and pay using the agentic finance economy, like over these X four or two protocols.”
Armstrong: AI agents let him submit finished PRs instead of tasking engineers
“And now instead of like pinging the team in Slack, I can basically tag an agent in Slack with that comment or drop it into our internal harness. And instead of bugging the team and asking them to do something, I just send them a PR for review and it's already …”
Armstrong: AI eliminates tasks rather than shrinking company headcount to ten
“It's kind of like just saying tasks are being Automated or eliminated. People are not being eliminated. I think tasks are being eliminated. And so if you take a company like any sort of company today, Coinbase or others that exist today it's not that I don't t…”
Armstrong: 88% of Coinbase revenue comes from non-Bitcoin trading
“Actually, 88% of our revenue is from non-Bitcoin trading at this point.”
Coinbase launches ex-US tokenized stocks, engaging SEC for US rollout
“We just announced our tokenized stocks product which is only available outside the U S right now, unfortunately, but we're working with the SEC and others to get in a path to do it in the U S.”
Armstrong: Private credit, treasuries, and deposits will all be tokenized
“Private credit and treasuries and bank deposits, like everything's going to get tokenized. And it, it's just going to mean that financial services is going to have modern, modern rails to run on.”
Armstrong: Coinbase prediction markets reached ~$100M run rate within months
“I think we shared in our last earnings call within months of launching it had to hit like a hundred million dollar revenue run rate. It's growing really nice, like over a hundred percent quarter over quarter, something like that.”
Armstrong: About 0.5% of global GDP runs on cryptocurrency
“About half of one percent of global GDP is running on crypto.”
Armstrong: Successful software founders have an obligation to fund hard tech
“And I think by the way, if you make some money in software, you kind of have an obligation to like put it into hard tech and help some of the bigger things that might advance society which are tend to be more capital intensive and intensive.”
Armstrong: Longevity field lacked great teams and was mostly snake oil
“And I didn't see like that many great teams working on, on longevity. I thought a lot of it was like kind of snake oil.”
Armstrong claims New Limit built the leading frontier model for epigenetic reprogramming
“We've built the leading frontier model for epigenetic reprogramming.”
Armstrong: New Limit will launch its first Phase 1 clinical trial next year
“And then the first phase one clinical trial will be launching next year.”
Armstrong: New Limit's initial clinical trial targets alcoholic liver disease
“With our liver program, the initial phase one clinical trial will be in people with alcohol liver disease or alcoholic liver ALD.”
Armstrong estimates an effective ALD drug might be worth $20 billion
“I think we estimated that yeah, like just that if that were drug alone works in ALD, it might be worth twenty billion dollars or something.”
Armstrong predicts skin rejuvenation is probably a trillion-dollar market
“That, that, that, that's probably a trillion dollar market right there if you can get your skin rejuvenated.”
Armstrong estimates 50M to 100M people actively use crypto monthly
“There's maybe about seven hundred million people in the world who have used crypto or hold crypto, but not all of them use it every month, which might be more like in the 50 to a hundred million dollar, 50 to a hundred million people range.”
Armstrong explores cognitive enhancement therapies for adults, children, and embryos
“One idea I've been contemplating a little bit is around cognitive enhancement. And there, you know, there's been these things people have realized, like if you, I think in, in development of children, like if you give them enough folic acid and like certain nu…”
Armstrong discloses investment in embryo editing startup Preventive
“There's a company I invested in called Preventive that's doing embryo editing.”
Armstrong predicts having children without embryo editing will eventually be considered abnormal
“I think it'll be more normal over time. And at some point it'll be abnormal To have children without doing this kind of screening and editing, because it'd be like, well, this is so risky.”