Today's guest is Xen Baynham-Herd, Director of Growth at Base and Global Builder Ecosystem lead at Coinbase, working at the centre of where crypto, AI agents, and the future of finance collide.
Before Coinbase, Xen spent eight years as a fixed income trader at UBS, where he championed an internal stablecoin project that eventually spun out into Finality, backed by UBS, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Santander. He then made the leap into crypto, rising to COO at blockchain.com, before stepping off the corporate ladder to work with Balaji Srinivasan on the Network State. He went on to found his own startup, Roam XYZ, which was later acquired by Coinbase.
In the full episode, we cover:
- Why the UK's financial system is broken and how blockchain actually fixes it
- How crypto networks like Base are becoming the closest thing we have to network states today
- Why every major bank — JPMorgan, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, UBS — is now quietly moving on-chain
- What x402 is and why AI agents are already paying each other on-chain
- Why agentic activity will be the primary use of crypto networks within a few years
- The highest-leverage opportunities for builders in the next 3 years
- The mindset and traits Xen looks for when hiring builders and backing founders
If you're a fintech founder, a builder thinking about where to place your bets next, or anyone trying to understand how crypto and AI agents are about to reshape the financial system, this one is essential listening.
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