Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are two paradigm-shifting technologies that have evolved independently but are starting to converge. Blockchain enables AI to be more transparent, while AI helps improve the user experience for transacting on-chain. 

According to Jonathan King, principal investor for Coinbase Ventures, the infrastructure layer that allows the two technologies to mesh was built over the last 12-18 months. Now we’re moving into the application layer. King, who leads Coinbase’s investment strategy in the crypto and AI space, sees more AI innovation built on crypto rails. 

“The area that is really starting to manifest today is the applicability of AI on-chain to unlock new use cases that haven’t been conceived,” he said in a recent interview. “The space is still very early and nascent, but it’s the best time to invest into these builders that are pushing the frontier forward.”

Coinbase Ventures is focusing on three intersection points between crypto and AI – AI agents, the decentralization of AI software and on-chain AI. King refers to this era as the Agentic Web. 

“You can think of it as AI agent intelligent systems that can perform tasks without human intervention, using crypto and blockchain technology to drive economic activity long term,” he said. 

The need for AI agents to get the data they need, even if it costs money, will drive economic activity, King said. “If an agent says, in order for me to fulfil your request, I need this data source that’s only accessible through an API, I’ll need to be able to pay for that API service,” he said. 

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“We’re going to see this emergence of micro transactions being performed by these agents. All of these transactions have some type of value and that’s essentially what leads to agents being the primary drivers of economic activity, both on and off-chain.”

King said crypto is going through its own robo-advisor phase, which he likened to an “on-chain Betterment.” 

Coinbase Ventures expects to see more investments into the firms building applications on top of crypto-AI infrastructure that will enable Agentic commerce. “Payman and Skyfire are two examples in the Coinbase Ventures portfolio that are helping to facilitate agent-to-human or agent-to-agent transactions using self-custody infrastructure and stablecoin rails,” he said. 

Coinbase isn’t just investing in AI through its venture arm, it’s using it in its trading platform for customer support, security and threat intelligence, King said. For example, Coinbase AgentKit allows developers to create AI agents with self-custody wallets that can autonomously interact with blockchain networks. 

“You can think about agents being able to orchestrate payments using stablecoins to other humans to complete tasks on behalf of the agent, or agents using stablecoins to pay for other agent services,” King said. 

King believes we’re seeing the new digital economy unfolding where humans orchestrate the tasks that AI agents execute. 

“I'm glad to see practitioners from both industries really trying to push the frontier forward,” King said. While Coinbase is still a crypto-first company, and will always be, he said he was happy to see synergies with emerging tech that improves user experience for people who transact on-chain. 

Todd Ruoff, CEO of Autonomys, a decentralized AI infrastructure provider, said AI agents are reshaping how smart contracts and decentralized governance work. 

“The ability to have autonomous, self-improving AI models interacting with financial protocols is a game changer,” Ruoff said. “Decentralized compute networks are also critical—controlling computation power is as important as controlling money. The real battle is between open, permissionless AI models and centralized, rent-seeking AI ecosystems.”