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Coinbase's Alec Glovett and Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov weigh in on how AI agents could change the way money moves onchain

Tue 10 Nov 2026 · 09:17 EST · 3 min read

In AI

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Software that pays for things on its own sounds like a premise from a Black Mirror episode. Coinbase and Chainlink would prefer you think of it as infrastructure.

Will Su joined Alec Glovett, who leads infrastructure at Coinbase, and Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, for a conversation about how AI agents could reshape digital transactions. The discussion centered on onchain finance and on the plumbing that would let autonomous software move money without a human approving every click.

Both companies are building tools for what they call an “agentic economy,” one where AI agents act as real participants in financial markets rather than chatbots that answer questions about them.

Two companies, two halves of the same problem

An AI agent that wants to transact needs two things. It needs trustworthy information about the world, and it needs a way to pay. Chainlink and Coinbase are each working on one side of that equation.

Nazarov’s focus is the Chainlink Runtime Environment, or CRE. He described it as a framework that lets AI agents interact safely with tokenized assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

According to Nazarov, agents using it can pull verified pricing data and move across different blockchains and protocols, but only within parameters that humans set in advance.

Nazarov also indicated that Chainlink hopes to add features built specifically for agents in the future. For now, CRE is being framed as the safety layer that makes autonomous activity onchain less of a gamble.

Chainlink has facilitated over $34 trillion in onchain transaction value, which gives it a meaningful claim to being part of the existing backbone of onchain finance.

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Coinbase bets on machine-to-machine payments

Glovett oversees Coinbase’s work on payments and stablecoins. A central piece of that portfolio is x402, a protocol designed for autonomous micropayments driven by AI.

The idea behind x402 is to let software pay software. An agent that needs data, compute, or a service can settle the bill on its own, following rules written into code.

Coinbase’s ambitions reach beyond small payments. The broader goal is to streamline financial activity, including trading of crypto and equities, through natural language commands and programmable payment tools.

x402 has reportedly processed tens of millions of agent transactions.

A conversation Nazarov keeps having

Nazarov has taken part in multiple forums in 2026 focused on AI agents and their effect on tokenization and digital assets.

The discussion did not come with headline-grabbing announcements. There was no new product launch, no token news, and no fresh adoption statistics tied to either company’s stock or token. The emphasis stayed on infrastructure, with compliance and interoperability getting more airtime than revenue.

What this means for the agentic economy

For investors, the most useful takeaway is about direction rather than immediate catalysts. Two major names in crypto infrastructure are converging on the same thesis: AI agents will need verified data, defined limits, and native payment rails to operate in finance.

The focus on compliance and interoperability could also matter for institutional adoption. A framework where humans set the boundaries and agents work inside them is easier to explain to a risk committee than a free-roaming trading bot.

The move toward natural language trading of both crypto and equities also blurs a line that regulators care about. Programmable payments that touch traditional securities will likely draw closer scrutiny than a bot buying API access for a fraction of a cent.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

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