Everyone figured Coinbase would hoard its x402 payments brainchild. Instead, it's handing reins to the Linux Foundation—backed by Google, Microsoft, and crypto players—betting on open standards to turbocharge fintech rails.
Coinbase just handed over control of x402—a radical new payment protocol—to the Linux Foundation. Here's why this matters for the future of AI agents, autonomous commerce, and whether the internet finally gets a native payment layer.
Coinbase's x402 protocol just achieved something crypto rarely does: getting Google, Stripe, and Amazon to agree on a standard. This isn't hype—it's the infrastructure layer that AI agents need to actually transact in the real world.
Thirteen million transactions in a single week. Then silence. The x402 protocol's explosive rise and mysterious collapse tells us something crucial about the next era of AI—and where the real money flows.