Could This 1 Surprising Stock Be the Best Buy for a Future Dominated by AI Agents?

Crypto markets have cooled significantly in the past few months, but this might be a good excuse to snap up some crypto stocks for cheap if you believe cryptocurrencies are poised to dominate in the long run. Coinbase (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong is making the case that AI models are going to make it easier for blockchain tech to break into formal sectors.

Armstrong's argument is deceptively simple but structurally profound. AI agents can't open bank accounts, can't pass Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, can't sign legal agreements, and can't use credit cards. However, they're increasingly required to transact with each other in real time. Stablecoins can solve this by functioning as neutral, programmable settlement assets that AI agents can use natively. Bots already make up a significant volume of the crypto market.

Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire described AI and crypto as “siamese twins” that were always likely to reconnect. Mastercard (MA) launched Agent Pay, Visa (V) built Intelligent Commerce, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison called stablecoins "room-temperature superconductors for financial services" last year.

The Case for COIN Stock If AI Agents Succeed

While total revenue fell short, Coinbase's stablecoin revenue hit $1.35 billion in 2025, up 48% year-over-year (YOY). This is arguably Coinbase's most defensible revenue stream. Total fiscal 2025 revenue was $7.2 billion, with $2.8 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Armstrong's longer-term play is to turn Coinbase into an "everything exchange" integrating digital assets, equities, commodities, and prediction markets into a single on-chain venue. That reframes the company less as a cyclical crypto business and more as infrastructure for programmable finance.

​The counterpoint is that we're looking at a loss-making company. Coinbase posted $667 million in GAAP Q4 losses, and the business still fundamentally tracks crypto asset prices and speculative retail sentiment.

The Bear Case

Investors aren't blindly dumping money into crypto anymore, and you're looking at pickiness across the board. Both AI and crypto companies have to justify their valuation, and Coinbase is one of the most heavily scrutinized companies. Both Bitcoin (BTCUSD) and Ethereum (ETHUSD) have fallen in tandem over the past few months. When you combine that with a lack of profitability, COIN stock won't go up anytime soon. It's still a very expensive asset at 47.5 times forward earnings.

Moreover, the correlation with crypto means there's really no way to predictably track the financials. Most other growth stocks come with some semblance of stability, and investors can sleep well knowing that the next earnings report will be more or less in line with estimates.

With Coinbase, it's entirely dependent on crypto trading volumes, which are unpredictable.

With no altseason on the horizon, I only see more losses.

Where COIN Stock Makes Sense

If you're trading COIN stock as a crypto proxy, the near-term picture isn't great. But the structural argument is different, and that's where Armstrong's AI agent thesis becomes relevant.

Coinbase isn't just talking about stablecoins and AI. It's already shipping the infrastructure. The Agentic Wallets launched on Base L2 with gasless transactions, programmable spending limits, and private keys stored in secure enclaves that are never exposed to the underlying LLM.

The x402 protocol, which embeds stablecoin payments directly into HTTP requests, has already processed over 50 million machine-to-machine transactions. When an AI agent requests a paid resource, the server returns an HTTP 402 status with payment details, the wallet handles it automatically, and the agent gets what it needs. No checkout flow, no human approval.

This means adoption is expanding beyond the crypto ecosystem, with Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google incorporating x402 into its AP2 agent payments protocol. Visa, PayPal (PYPL), and American Express (AXP) are also making similar systems.

The risk, of course, is that the "everything exchange" vision takes years to materialize, and the stock bleeds in the interim because quarterly results still swing wildly with crypto sentiment. If you have the pain tolerance for that, buying COIN stock may be a good idea.