Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Global (Nasdaq: COIN), the largest cryptocurrency trading exchange in the United States. The billionaire can always be found trying to pu
Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Global (Nasdaq: COIN), the largest cryptocurrency trading exchange in the United States.
The billionaire can always be found trying to pull strings to make crypto more popular and legitimate in the country and the world. As a tech entrepreneur, another subject he is passionate about is artificial intelligence (AI).
So when Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) recently unveiled a new monetization gateway for the AI age, Armstrong couldn't resist reacting.
Brian Armstrong, chief executive officer of Coinbase Global Inc., during a television interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.Getty Images
Cloudflare is a technology company best known for its internet services, including content delivery network (CDN) services, cloud cybersecurity, and DDoS mitigation.
On July 1, Cloudflare announced a monetization gateway to give its customers the ability to charge for any asset protected by the tech giant.
For decades, most websites have been making money by displaying advertisements, such as Google ads, banner ads, etc. So far, the model has worked because it is humans who visit websites. When they look at adverts, they click them, which makes it financially sustainable for a website to run.
But this is the age of AI agents who don't browse the web like people. These agents crawl the internet with specific requests.
When an agent needs information from a website, it simply makes the request, reads it, and leaves without bothering to scan and click on ads.
Cloudflare argues that the internet’s current business model collapses when AI agents, not humans, become the primary customers.
The tech company has proposed a monetization model in which an agent has to pay for every request, whether it’s a webpage, API, or a dataset. Everything has a tiny price attached to it.
So, it could cost $0.001 to read a webpage or $0.05 to download a peer-reviewed academic paper.
The agent makes an automatic payment, and the request is accepted.
Cloudflare has made a case for stablecoins to be the mode of payment for the agents.
Related: Explained: What is a stablecoin?
A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a steady, fixed value by being pegged to a "stable" real-world asset, like the U.S. dollar.
So, the value of one unit of dollar-pegged stablecoins such as Circle Internet Group’s (NYSE: CRCL) USDC and Tether's USDT is the same as that of one U.S. dollar. This is why such stablecoins are also called "digital dollars."
As per Cloudflare, traditional payment rails aren't designed for micropayments. If an agent has to pay $0.003, Visa fees alone would make that impractical.
But stablecoins—Cloudflare mentions USDC and Open USD—make these micropayments economical because transaction costs are extremely low and settlements are quick and around-the-clock.
In simple terms, Cloudflare wants to replace the internet's advertisement-based model with a pay-for-use model as AI agents replace humans as the majority of internet users.
Armstrong responded enthusiastically to Cloudflare's monetization model for the AI age.
"Finally, the web has native monetization. Ads were not the only way," he wrote on X on July 7.
The Coinbase co-founder suggested this is the AI-ready future of the internet, which can exist beyond advertisements and can sustain itself with stablecoin micropayments.
Notably, Coinbase has a years-long relationship with Circle, as they jointly built the USDC stablecoin ecosystem. Although Circle is now the sole issuer of USDC, Coinbase remains its largest distribution partner and shares heavily in the economics of the stablecoin reserves.
Related: Circle stock slips amid criminal complaint in major U.S. state
