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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
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