Coinbase

**Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends.** **Never miss future editions.** Rob Witoff, CTO of Coinbase, joins us in his first interview since returning to the crypto company. He explains why 98–99% of Coinbase’s code is now written by agents, how his engineers went from writing code by hand to supervising 3–10 agents each in a single year, and why a Friday-morning “spicy feedback” agent may be giving Coinbase bigger productivity gains than AI in product development. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: \* Why Coinbase engineers are producing 100x the code they did a year ago, and why agent managers of agent managers are coming next \* Why it’s now cheaper to build a prototype than to ask for permission, and why a picture is worth a thousand words but a prototype is worth a million \* The weekly AI feedback agent every Coinbase employee receives, and the “spicy” section that tells Rob to get out of the weeds \* Why crypto is so volatile, and why "it's never as good or as bad as it seems \* Will Coinbase become the financial super app? ***Watch or listen now across*** *YouTube****,*** *Apple Podcasts****,*** *Spotify****, and*** *X* ***Download the transcript 👇*** Timestamps (0:00) Meet Rob Witoff(2:30) Crypto's Understated Opportunity(4:09) Coinbase's Next Opportunity(5:30) Inside Coinbase's CTO Role(8:10) Managing a Third of the Company Under Engineering(10:28) Taste & Judgment in the Modern Era of Engineering(13:33) Inside Coinbase's Engineering Team: Zero to One(15:35) How to Set Up Engineers for Success(18:28) How Rob Sets Up His Agents(20:17) How Disruptive Are Model Updates(22:51) Would Coinbase Ever Launch Its Own AI Model?(26:12) Agentic Trading(26:52) Why Are Markets So Volatile?(29:02) What Is the Super App Opportunity?(31:20) Why Now Is the Moment for Agentic Financial Services(34:38) The Fundamentals of Security(35:38) The Agentic Consumer Experience(41:34) Prediction Markets(43:52) Stablecoins(45:45) Will Stablecoins Be Country-Owned?(47:35) The New Financial Infrastructure(49:52) How Coinbase Structures Internal Feedback(54:16) Ollie Joins as Rob's Chief of Staff(57:41) Has 2026 Been the Inflection Point for AI? Lessons from this episode with Rob **1. Why 98–99% of Coinbase’s code is now written by agents, and why engineers are becoming supervisors of loops and systems** A year ago, Coinbase engineers were writing code by hand. Today almost all of it is written by agents, and Rob says he didn’t predict it would change this fast. \* Most engineers now supervise three to five agents, and sometimes 10, throughout the day. Rob calls that a very different muscle to exercise. \* The next step is supervising whole loops and systems, which shifts the job to deciding what problems should be solved in the first place. \* Coinbase is building a “Coinbase brain” that holds its product and architecture strategy and directs its agents and loops. **2. The weekly AI feedback agent that tells Rob to get out of the weeds** Every Friday at 9am, everyone at Coinbase gets a full assessment of how they’re working, built from their Slack messages and transcribed meetings. It covers what they’re doing well and where their gaps are. \* Rob’s favorite part is the “spicy feedback” section, which asks: what is the really hard feedback you need to hear? \* People might not want to say “Rob, get out of my way,” but his agent isn’t afraid to say it. \* Lessons that used to take him six months to learn, he now iterates on every week. **3. Why it’s now cheaper to build a prototype than to ask for permission** Rob doesn’t want people coming to him or their lead with an idea. He wants them to go and build it, and that applies to 100% of the company, including non-engineers. \* During one tax season, people were debating how to fix a confusing tax form. A non-engineer built a fully working prototype, and it immediately became the thing they built. \* A picture is worth a thousand words, but a prototype is worth a million. \* Once people can see, touch and feel something, it gets far more attention and momentum. **4. How Coinbase builds taste and judgment in engineers** Rob says taste in modern engineering means thinking like an entrepreneur about what you’re building and why. That starts with being a daily user of your own product. \* Employees can now direct deposit their pay into the Coinbase app, a small feature that makes it easy for everyone to use the product and find its rough edges. \* Judgment comes from battle scars: you have to make mistakes to learn the big lessons. \* Large companies can’t let staff make mistakes that hit customers, so Coinbase builds safe environments where engineers can break things without customers being affected. **5. Why Coinbase flattened its layers so the engineer doing the work is in the room** Large companies have traditionally had many layers, from manager to director to senior director and up. Rob says that is good for coordinating but slow for executing. \* Over the last year, Coinbase deliberately removed layers between decision-makers and the people doing the work. \* His rule of thumb is that for any big architectural decision, the engineer who will execute it is in the room when it’s discussed. \* This removes the games of telephone that have historically made it hard to execute at scale. **6. How to trust an AI agent with your money: read-only first, hard limits second, human sign-off third** Rob describes a path that applies to almost any use of agents. Agents start with read-only access and earn more control over time. \* Even read-only access can show you how your portfolio is allocated and whether it still matches your risk tolerance. \* Once agents can trade on your behalf, they need hard limits on which funds they can move. \* Escalating to a human has to be a core part of the workflow, so the agent never makes an assumption you wouldn’t make. Where to find and connect with us Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsyth Follow Rob on X: https://x.com/rwitoff Visit Coinbase: https://coinbase.com/ Our partner for today's episode is Harmonic, your go-to startup database: https://harmonic.ai Previous episodes include See all previous episodes here 👉 If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe