Why I’m Bullish on Coinbase’s (COIN) Pivot to the Agentic Economy

I’m increasingly bullish on Coinbase’s (COIN) pivot to the agentic economy, despite the stock’s extended decline. Shares are caught in a localized crypto storm that has wiped out a chunk of any recent gains. Yet, looking past the ticker’s high volatility, I find myself increasingly bullish on what Brian Armstrong is building under the hood. While the market fears over short-term regulatory headwinds and stablecoin yields, Coinbase is quietly terraforming a new continent of commerce with artificial intelligence (AI) agents.

From Trading Floor to Digital Foundry

Since its initial public offering (IPO), the bear case against Coinbase has been that it is a glorified casino that lives and dies with the retail crypto cycle. If Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was up, the “casino” thrived on fat trading fees. If it crashed, the lights went out. This is evident in its revenue mix over the past five years, as shown in the bar chart below. However, that narrative is becoming quite dated. What we are witnessing now is a fundamental mutation of the business model. Coinbase is, in fact, positioning itself as the mission-critical infrastructure for the “Agentic Web.”

This shift is based on the realization that while AI can think at the speed of light, it still pays at the speed of a 1970s bank ledger. Try asking a standard Large Language Model (LLM) to book you a flight or negotiate a bulk data purchase from an Application Programming Interface (API) provider. It hits a brick wall the moment it needs a credit card or a bank account.

Traditional banking friction, including know-your-customer (KYC) delays, high wire fees, and the sheer impossibility of opening a checking account for a piece of Python code, has been the ultimate bottleneck for the autonomous economy. Coinbase is solving this by potentially becoming the de facto “Central Bank” for silicon-based entities.

Money at the Speed of Thought

The key in this evolution is the new AgentKit protocol. In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen the company supercharge this toolkit by integrating it with the x402 protocol developed alongside Cloudflare (NET) to enable seamless, on-chain micropayments. It’s a technical mouthful, but the human implication is simple; it allows developers to spin up “Agentic Wallets” in under two minutes. These are autonomous financial engines that allow AI agents to earn, spend, and trade without a human having to click “approve” for every five-cent transaction.

The latest developments around AgentKit, like the high-profile partnership with World ID announced this March, have added a layer of cryptographic “human-backing” to these bots. This solves the Sybil attack problem, the fear that one person could unleash a million malicious bots to crash a platform. Because Coinbase is bridging its financial rails with World ID’s identity verification, we are seeing the birth of a trusted machine economy.

What I find quite fascinating is that an AI agent can now prove it’s backed by a real person and then use Coinbase’s Base network to settle a debt in USDC (USDC-USD) instantly. If you think about it, this sidesteps the entire legacy banking system. You don’t need any Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) codes, 3% credit card fees, or a three-day settlement wait. For a company like Coinbase, this transforms them from a retail broker into the primary toll booth for the entire future of AI commerce.

Why the Valuation Still Makes Sense

Of course, the “value” crowd will point to the price tag and scoff. Even with the stock dipping lately, down to around $160 as of this writing, it still looks expensive by traditional metrics. COIN is currently trading at about a hefty 42x this year’s expected earnings per share (EPS) of $3.79. In a world of roughly 5% interest rates, this multiple is surely a steep mountain to climb, especially for a company that still has one foot in the volatile world of crypto trading.

Yet, when you connect the dots of the AgentKit rollout and the explosive growth of the Base ecosystem, the growth profile changes. Consensus forecasts already expect EPS to surge to $7.11 by 2028. At that level, you’re looking at a roughly 24x multiple on those forward earnings. This is the company that effectively owns the infrastructure for the next generation of the internet, so I don’t believe the stock is expensive today, given such an ambitious earnings growth trajectory. Yes, this trajectory is speculative, but if you want a proxy for where global finance is headed, there isn’t a more potent play on the board.

Is Coinbase Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?

On Wall Street, Coinbase has a Moderate Buy consensus rating, based on 18 Buy, five Hold, and one Sell ratings. COIN’s average price target of $262.05 implies about 63% upside potential over the next 12 months.

Final Thoughts

Coinbase stock is likely to remain volatile for the time being. This is especially true in today’s choppy market. However, there’s a bigger story at play. Beyond its classic trading revenue, it is building the infrastructure for an AI-driven economy in which agents can transact independently. I believe that if that vision takes hold, today’s volatility may matter far less than the long-term opportunity.