Coinbase's valuation could be reshaped by AI agent payments and stablecoin growth

Author: Artemis

Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow

Shenchao Summary: Wall Street views Coinbase as a brokerage tied to Bitcoin’s price movements, assigning it a valuation half that of Circle. However, data shows that 92.8% of AI agent payments occur on Base, and 99.8% are settled in USDC—Coinbase has become the foundational infrastructure for AI-native finance, not just an exchange. If even half of McKinsey’s $5 trillion projection for AI agent commerce by 2030 materializes, Coinbase’s valuation logic must be rewritten.

Bullish case for Coinbase becoming a $300 billion company by 2031

Key insight: Most people view Coinbase as a crypto brokerage whose performance fluctuates with Bitcoin and crypto trading volumes. This narrow perspective overlooks Coinbase’s long-term upside: in a world where stablecoin supply reaches $3 trillion and AI agent commerce reaches $5 trillion by 2031, Coinbase stands to capture immense value as the co-creator of USDC (under a favorable distribution agreement with Circle) and the creator of x402 and Base—the primary venues for AI agent commerce today.

Artemis is a digital finance research firm focused on on-chain data. We have assisted McKinsey in estimating real-world stablecoin payment volumes and have published extensively on AI agent commerce and the digital finance landscape in 2030. As cryptocurrency and AI converge, Coinbase will no longer be merely a cryptocurrency exchange, but will become the settlement, distribution, and commerce layer for AI-native finance.

Most people view Coinbase as a cyclical crypto brokerage that fluctuates with crypto trading volume.

As expected, Coinbase's performance follows the same trend as other brokerages such as IBKR, Robinhood, and Schwab.

Circle, as a pure play on stablecoin growth, received a much higher valuation multiple (103.9x NTM P/E).

Coinbase could become a $300 billion company by 2031 (6x its current value, at a 35% CAGR), emerging as a primary winner in stablecoins and AI agent payments—not just as a crypto exchange. See the full model here.

Our core assumption:

• The supply of stablecoins reaches $3 trillion by 2031.
• AI agent transaction volume reaches $7.5 trillion by 2031.
• Our assumptions regarding core exchange business align with the market—trading revenue of approximately $6 billion by 2028.

The fact that the market overlooks is that Coinbase has benefited and thrived from two generational tailwinds:

1. The Rise of Stablecoins and Global Demand for a Digital Dollar. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent forecasts that the supply of stablecoins will reach $3 trillion by 2030, a tenfold increase from today. Bain & Company estimates that supply could grow twelvefold to $3.8 trillion by 2030.

2. The Rise of AI Agent Commerce. McKinsey predicts that the global AI agent commerce market will reach $3–5 trillion by 2030, and we forecast that one-third of this volume will be settled on-chain using AI agent payment protocols such as x402 and MPP. We are currently witnessing rapid growth in on-chain AI agent payments:

Coinbase clearly benefits from these two tailwinds: as the largest and most regulated distributor of USDC, and by capturing value through its network for AI agent payments.

Even if institutions remain skeptical of DeFi and believe crypto is "dead," Coinbase will still prevail—not because of crypto or trading volume, but by becoming the most trusted and dominant platform for stablecoins and AI agent payment infrastructure.

The market doesn't recognize that Coinbase is the clear winner in stablecoin growth—even as crypto trading volume declines, stablecoin usage has historically shown a consistent upward trend.

The USDC distribution protocol is an asset of Coinbase, not Circle. Circle’s revenue share paid to Coinbase has risen from 32% in 2022 to approximately 50% over the past two years. The structural reasons are straightforward: Coinbase earns approximately 100% yield on the USDC held within its products and receives a significant portion from off-platform balances under the Payment Base waterfall mechanism. As Coinbase’s distribution scale grows—averaging $17.8 billion in USDC held within its products in Q4 2025, a record high—its waterfall share increases accordingly.

From an investor perspective, the agreement more closely resembles Coinbase outsourcing regulatory and reserve management to Circle, rather than Circle paying Coinbase for distribution. The partnership agreement has a three-year term and automatically renews, provided three thresholds (product, company, and distributor) are met. Public filings indicate that if these thresholds are satisfied, "the Circle agreement cannot be terminated." The renewal mechanism is not a cliff edge for renegotiation—it is a lock-in. For Circle, exiting means cutting off its largest single distribution channel for USDC. For Coinbase, the upside scenario—where regulatory clarity drives mass adoption of stablecoin payments and USDC’s market cap expands significantly—flows directly through the same contractual share. The structure of this contract continuously strengthens Coinbase’s position, regardless of who operates Circle.

Beyond Coinbase, we’ve also observed many interesting use cases for USDC, particularly in emerging protocols. We’ve seen significant growth in USDC supply over the past two years in protocols such as Polymarket, Hyperliquid, and MakerDAO. As new financial use cases emerge on blockchain platforms, we continue to see USDC actively used within these protocols.

Coinbase is well-positioned to capture the next wave of stablecoin use cases—payments. Payment types on the card rail (B2B, B2C) have increased significantly over the past year, with USDC continuously gaining market share in these transactions.

By observing on-chain transfers of USDC (a proxy indicator for such transactions), it is evident that USDC is gaining market share relative to USDT.

The Digital Asset Market Clearing Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633), commonly known as the CLARITY Act, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, by a bipartisan vote of 294-134. The bill establishes a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets, excluding payment stablecoins. For Coinbase, the CLARITY Act represents the most significant pending U.S. legislation affecting its regulatory environment, and will establish a substantially complete federal regulatory structure for Coinbase’s digital asset ecosystem.

The CLARITY Act is also more relevant to Coinbase’s stablecoin economics than commonly recognized. The revenue streams generated by Coinbase’s distribution and reserve share arrangement with Circle, under current interest rate assumptions, are comparable to Circle’s own economic gains at the issuer level, while Coinbase’s USDC rewards program adds another line of revenue whose ultimate scale depends on the final drafting of the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise. The market has underestimated the size and durability of these stablecoin-related revenue streams, treating them as ancillary to exchange operations rather than as core infrastructure economics in their own right. The CLARITY Act strengthens this argument by formalizing a broader regulatory framework for stablecoin clearing, settlement, and circulation—and by explicitly designating registered intermediaries through which stablecoin flows pass. It redefines Coinbase’s stablecoin business as an application layer within a regulated, rapidly institutionalized system, rather than as an independent consumer product line whose value fluctuates with retail token trading volumes.

Most investors consider Stripe (valued at $159 billion as of February 2026) and Tempo to be clear winners in AI agent commerce, but on-chain data shows otherwise: 92.8% of genuine AI agent payment volume occurs on Base, and 99.8% is settled in USDC.

Over 99.8% of all AI agent payment volume occurs on x402—the open payment protocol pioneered by Coinbase.

AI agents are transitioning from assistants that answer questions to systems that trade on behalf of users, purchasing APIs, data endpoints, computing power, inference, and services at sub-cent speeds and economies.

The existing card rails were not designed for this. Typical card transactions have a fixed cost of about $0.03 to $0.04 before interchange fees, making a $0.003 API call economically unfeasible—two orders of magnitude apart. Stablecoins settled on high-throughput L2 networks can clear in seconds at a fraction of a cent per transaction, without requiring manual setup of billing relationships.

McKinsey forecasts global AI agent commerce sales to reach $3–5 trillion by 2030. Gartner estimates that by 2028, AI agents will mediate over $15 trillion in B2B procurement. Both figures are directional and should be viewed as such; however, what is not speculative is that if either materializes, it structurally favors the stablecoin pathway, with USDC already the default choice, directly benefiting Coinbase.

The x402 standard, a native HTTP micropayment protocol co-developed by Coinbase (now managed by the Linux Foundation), has become the leading open protocol for AI agents to initiate payments. Since October 2025, x402 has processed over 180 million AI agent payments, facilitating $47.5 million in AI agent spending across more than 5,000 merchants selling to AI agents.

When merchants make their services available for consumption by AI agents, Coinbase’s L2 and USDC are already the default payment rails. Additionally, Agentic.Market gives Coinbase a pathway to own resource discovery. If AI agents use it to find, evaluate, and route to x402 services, value is generated not only through settlement on Base and USDC volume, but also through Coinbase’s position as the marketplace coordinating transactions between AI agents and services.

Coinbase captures the AI agent payment economics through four integrated lines built around the stablecoin pillar: USDC float, Base settlement, CDP/AgentKit monetization, and Agentic.Market distribution.

USDC reserve yield. Coinbase’s highest upside revenue stream is not transaction fees, but float. AI agent wallets require pre-funded balances to authorize autonomous spending, pay for APIs, cover usage-based services, and settle machine-to-machine commerce in real time. As AI agents become economic actors, USDC balances held in Coinbase-controlled wallets become recurring, yield-generating deposits. Every dollar of USDC held by AI agents generates reserve income, regardless of how quickly it turns over.

Base Sequencer Economics. Every x402 or MPP-style transaction settled on Base becomes a sequenced transaction capable of generating priority fees. This line scales with the number of transactions, not just volume, which is significant because AI agent commerce may occur at higher frequencies with smaller ticket sizes. That said, sequencer fees may represent the smallest portion of upside potential, as transaction costs tend to decrease over time.

CDP, AgentKit, and Monetizing Intermediaries. Coinbase can monetize the developer layer that enables AI agents to hold wallets, manage permissions, sponsor gas, settle x402 payments, and interact with paid services. This includes fees from intermediaries for x402 transactions, wallet infrastructure, gasless transactions, key management, policy controls, and enterprise-grade developer tools. If CDP becomes the default infrastructure stack for AI agent payments, Coinbase can generate platform revenue even if the final payment value is low.

We assume the annual volume of AI agent commerce will reach $5 trillion by 2030. The majority will still be routed through cards, ACH, bank transfers, and account-to-account rails, especially for large-scale consumer and enterprise purchases. However, machine-native, high-frequency, cross-border, API-based commerce will disproportionately utilize stablecoins and payment standards such as x402 and MPP.

In the bullish scenario, approximately 20% of AI agent commerce settles via stablecoin rails, representing annual AI agent payment volumes of $1.0 to $1.5 trillion based on stablecoins. A representative bullish scenario revenue calculation is as follows:

• USDC float: $200 billion average AI agent USDC balance × 4% reserve yield × 50% Coinbase attributable economics = $4 billion
• CDP/AgentKit/Facilitator/Agentic.Market: Developer subscriptions, wallet infrastructure, x402 facilitation, market routing, provider analytics, and distribution fees = $750 million
• Base Sequencer: $250–300 billion in AI agent payments on Base, hundreds of billions of transactions, with low per-transaction economics = $250 million

This points to approximately $4.25 billion in annual Coinbase attributable AI agent revenue. The key insight is that real value accumulates if Coinbase becomes the operating account, developer platform, discovery layer, and settlement rail for autonomous commerce—areas in which they have made significant progress over the past few months.

Coinbase’s advantage lies in its control over four interlocking layers of the AI agent payment stack: USDC float, Base settlement, CDP/AgentKit infrastructure, and Agentic.Market discovery.

USDC is the default settlement asset, meaning builders integrate it first due to its deepest tools, liquidity, and developer support. Base then benefits as the natural settlement chain for native USDC-powered AI agent payments, offering low developer friction and growing facilitator coverage. CDP and AgentKit sit one layer above, providing developers with the wallets, key management, gas sponsorship, and payment infrastructure needed to make AI agents economically active. Finally, Agentic.Market can serve as the discovery and routing layer where AI agents find, compare, and consume services supporting x402. Competitors entering this market must replicate liquidity, settlement, developer infrastructure, and distribution all at once—and every new AI agent, merchant, and service makes the existing Coinbase stack harder to displace.

The market views Coinbase as a cryptocurrency exchange, overlooking its construction of an AI-native financial platform. Global leaders forecast $3 trillion in stablecoin supply and $5 trillion in AI agent commerce by 2030, with stablecoins already decoupled from crypto price movements. Coinbase has positioned itself as a winner in that future and is showing early leadership. x402, USDC, and Base have become the de facto stack for AI agent commerce, with each layer holding over 90% market share against competitors. Coinbase occupies a unique position, having developed Base, incubated x402, and secured favorable economics within the USDC ecosystem. The mispricing rests on three pillars: Circle’s protocol structure locks in revenue through non-renewable contracts, making the stablecoin revenue stream durable rather than at risk. The CLARITY Act formalizes the regulated infrastructure layer Coinbase already operates, re-pricing the business from a consumer product to a core market pipeline. And the four-layer AI agent stack (USDC, Base, CDP, Agentic.Market) exhibits reflexive compounding—each new AI agent and merchant deepens the moat and makes it harder to attack. Coinbase’s valuation should align more closely with infrastructure peers than broker-dealer peers. We believe Coinbase will become a $300 billion company, powered by these generational tailwinds, with most revenue coming from subscription and service lines such as stablecoins and AI agent commerce.

Disclosure: This material is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other form of advice. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be construed as recommendations to buy, sell, or hold any asset. The author or affiliated entities may hold positions in the assets discussed. You should conduct your own research and consult with appropriate financial professionals before making any investment decisions.