Coinbase Bets on AI Payments Boom Fueled by Digital Dollars

In an industrial-chic event space in Brooklyn, about 100 engineers from Malaysia to Italy spent a sweltering August weekend racing against the clock. The tech-savvy crowd was competing at Coinbase Global Inc.’s “Crypto x AI” hackathon, wiring chatbots and mobile apps to run on digital dollars in a bet that stablecoins — once dismissed as crypto’s dullest invention — could become the plumbing of the new AI age.

The coding exercises appeared unassuming at first glance: a publishing tool that paid writers instantly, a chatbot charging cents per answer, a marketplace where friends in a group chat could trade ...