Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Says Silicon Valley’s Crypto AI Intersect Is ‘Just Getting Started’

• Balaji Srinivasan has invested heavily in AI startups and was Coinbase’s first chief technology officer.
• Elon Musk leads xAI and remains closely tied to crypto commentary, particularly when it comes to Dogecoin.
• Meanwhile, Sam Altman runs OpenAI and co-founded Worldcoin, a crypto-based digital identity project.

Coinbase (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong said on Friday that the merger between artificial intelligence (AI) and the crypto world is “just getting started.”

He was responding to a post on X by Shaun Macguire, a partner at Sequoia, who said the two sectors are poised to merge again, pointing to a number of similarities, including the fact that Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and investor Balaji Srinivasan were interested in both sectors. 

Musk has often joked about putting Dogecoin (DOGE) on the moon, most recently last week, and he leads xAI, which has recently been in the spotlight for its potential merger with SpaceX.

Meanwhile, Altman founded OpenAI with Musk, before Musk departed over creative differences, known for its ChatGPT platform. He also founded Worldcoin (WLD), a privacy-focused human identity system that uses iris scans for authentication. 

WLD’s price hit an all-time low of $0.318 on Thursday before rebounding to $0.364 – still down 8.8% in the last 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the token fell to ‘bearish’ from ‘neutral’ territory with chatter at ‘high’ levels.

Srinivasan has been more active as an investor than an operator in AI. He has backed companies including Perplexity, Replit, and Anduril, while maintaining deep ties to the crypto sector. He served as Coinbase’s first chief technology officer, co-founded the crypto policy group Coin Center, and was an early investor in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL). He has also supported projects such as Alchemy, OpenSea, and Polygon during his tenure at Andreessen Horowitz.

Two Sides Of The Applied Math Coin

Maguire framed the relationship between crypto and AI as cyclical rather than coincidental. In his post, he described the two as “two sides of the applied math coin,” arguing that early technologists recognized their shared foundations long before the AI boom reignited interest in the space.

“I love crypto,” Maguire wrote. “Crypto and AI were born as siamese twins… that will merge again.” 

The overall cryptocurrency market has been going through a rough patch of late, with many analysts postulating that “crypto winter” has arrived – others agree, but believe we might be near the end of the bear cycle. Bitcoin’s price was down 8.8% in the last 24 hours to $65,913 on Friday morning, after hitting an intra-day low of around $60,000 – a level not seen since October 2024.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the apex cryptocurrency fell to ‘extremely bearish’ from ‘bearish’ territory over the past day, with chatter at ‘extremely high’ levels. 

Read also: Bitcoin’s Slide Triggers MSTR’s Biggest One-Day Drop In Over A Year – But These Three Crypto Stocks Took a Bigger Hit

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

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