Kyle Reidhead
CEO & Analyst of Milk Road/Milk Road AI
Coinbase can earn from growing agentic payments through Base transaction fees and yield on dollars backing USDC on Base. Its x402 protocol lets agents pay instantly for web services with stablecoins; cumulative Base x402 transactions rose from 1.5K to 138.5M in five quarters. After a Q4 2025 testing jump, quarterly activity rose from 14M to 18M to 23M in 2026, which looks like accelerating organic use, not just testing. x.com
Coinbase is the favorite way to play a coming stablecoin boom, since it owns the bulk of Circle's revenues and is building payments and agent infrastructure. Stablecoin supply lags Bitcoin, but with no blowups this cycle it dipped about 5% versus 25% last time, so growth should return much faster. Catalysts include the GENIUS Act by January 18, 2027, SEC-CFTC cooperation and Treasury Secretary Bessent's $3.7 trillion outlook. An expanded Citi deal lets Citi merchants accept stablecoins. x.com x.com
Coinbase is the big bet on who gets paid as agentic AI traffic floods onto crypto rails. Early Bitcoin and Ethereum speculation funded the payment infrastructure agents need, and agent counts are multiplying. Coinbase says its x402 protocol has passed 165M transactions, the SEC approved a five-year Innovation Exemption for trading tokenized US stocks onchain, tokenized equities grew 860% to about $3.5B, and DTCC's full tokenization service launches in October. x.com
Agent payments and AI infrastructure make AI crypto one of the strongest early-bull-market narratives. Coinbase's x402 is the clearest signal: agents made 138 million-plus Base transactions, mostly under 10 cents. Bittensor subnets earn outside revenue; Render and Akash supply GPU power; NEAR builds agent rails. Grayscale's AI crypto sector rose 54% in September vs roughly 24% for the broader market. Still early and volatile; rotation may follow if Bitcoin holds a base and the narrative sticks. … Show more
Coinbase is a bubbly stock priced as a proxy for crypto trading, yet experienced crypto users leave it for better exchanges. It works for beginners, where it can take advantage of unknowledgeable investors, but more than a decade of crypto use shows Coinbase gets replaced as soon as users find something better. x.com
Growing stablecoin payments and business adoption position Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, Circle and PayPal for a massive shift in global payments. Stablecoins are moving from crypto speculation into real-world financial infrastructure; payments reached $482B year to date, up 45%. Autonomous AI-agent transactions may be the next frontier. x.com
Higher rates make Coinbase a surprising winner because it receives the revenue USDC earns on its reserves. With USDC's market cap stable and rates up, stablecoin revenue will likely be higher in 2H2026 and 2027. The case does not rest on crypto trading, which @gorsk4023 notes could suffer if rates hurt equities. x.com x.com
Coinbase is expensive against its cash earnings. At $184.53 it trades at 70x cash earnings and 62x next year's, while the industry usually gets 30x. Fair value is $78.24–$99.58, or 30x next year's cash earnings give or take 12%, leaving the stock 85% above the high end. This is a levels-only read off reported earnings and revenue estimates, with no fundamental work. x.com
Coinbase is becoming much more than a crypto exchange, with USDC, derivatives, prediction markets, tokenization and Base. The chart supports it: the stock has built a massive seven-month Stage 1 base and reclaimed its 200-day moving average, and when it gets going it tends to move hard. x.com
Coinbase participated in the crypto rebound's trading activity. Its spot volume rose about 41-50% month over month to roughly $61-64 billion, overtaking Bybit for third among top-tier spot exchanges. That counters AlphaTAEdgde's claim that the rebound's volume bypassed Coinbase. x.com
Coinbase's revenue growth has turned negative, enough to reconsider the view that its dips are buyable. It may not be worth touching in the near term, even if it rebounds technically. x.com
Ripple's growing distribution and financial scale are expanding the wider XRP ecosystem. RLUSD is now available on Coinbase and Coinbase Prime for users and institutions to convert dollars at 1:1. Ripple says it is on track to exit 2026 at $900 million in annualized product revenue, after enabling over $16 trillion in transactions across its products in 2025; it reports 1,700-plus clients, over 85 regulatory licenses and final approval for a US National Trust Bank charter. x.com x.com
