Pro-crypto Democrat Christian Menefee defeated longtime Representative Al Green in the Democratic primary runoff for Texas’ redrawn 18th Congressional District. 

The Associated Press called the race shortly after polls closed on Tuesday, May 26. Meanwhile, the result ends Green’s two-decade run in Congress and puts Menefee in position for the November election. He will face Republican nominee Ronald Whitfield, according to Axios.

Menefee had already won a special election earlier this year to fill the seat left vacant after former Representative Sylvester Turner’s death. Green entered the race after Texas lawmakers redrew his old district.

Base, the Ethereum layer-2 developed by Coinbase, has unveiled a tool that ties Base accounts to artificial intelligence agents for on-chain operations. The new Base MCP, or Model Context Protocol, lets users prompt AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT to perform actions like transferring funds, swapping tokens, checking balances, reviewing transaction history, and using supported apps within Base’s ecosystem.

The interaction is chat-driven: the AI agent suggests an action, and a Base wallet window opens for the user to confirm or cancel. Crucially, the agent never has access to private keys, and every proposed action must be explicitly approved by the user. Base notes that each transaction follows the same review flow as any Base account request, with asset changes simulated before confirmation. This balance between automation and user control is a central design choice as AI agents begin to handle more on-chain tasks.

Coinbase executives have pitched MCP as part of a broader AI-payments strategy. Lincoln Murr, head of AI Product at Coinbase, described the approach as a “nice wrapper” on top of existing APIs, enabling a Base Account to travel with you—your trades, history, and portfolio remain accessible whether you’re operating in-agent or within the Base App. The move also aims to expand the adoption of Coinbase’s x402 protocol, an agentic AI payment standard the company rolled out in May 2025. Together, MCP and x402 are positioned to unlock a new micro-transaction economy, where AI agents can initiate small crypto payments across participating protocols.

That vision sits against a still-nascent market. According to data tracked by x402scan, the x402 protocol processed about $1.1 million in volume over the past 30 days—a reminder that the “agentic payments” thesis remains in early days, even as it attracts attention from investors and developers alike. The broader ecosystem already includes integrations with DeFi protocols such as Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr, and Virtuals, all of which Base notes can be accessed via AI-driven prompts.

As with any AI-enabled on-chain workflow, the concept has its detractors. A recent Google-backed research paper and accompanying university work warned that AI agents should be treated as untrusted system components, emphasizing the need for clear separation between instructions and data to avoid manipulation through malicious prompts. In parallel, industry watchers noted security pitfalls as the broader AI-in-wallet paradigm evolves. Earlier this week, the Socket developer platform disclosed malware targeting crypto developers by injecting hidden instructions to hijack AI coding assistants. These threats underline the careful security stance required for AI-assisted on-chain actions. Fireblocks has also explored agentic payment support for AI agents, signaling a broader industry push toward standardizing these capabilities within trust frameworks.

Key takeaways

• Base MCP enables AI agents to solicit on-chain actions from Base accounts, with user-approved execution through the Base wallet and no direct access to private keys.
• The system supports interactions with major on-chain protocols (Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr, Virtuals), expanding the scope of AI-assisted DeFi activities.
• Base ties MCP to the x402 protocol, aiming to codify agentic AI payments and unlock a micro-transaction economy, though current activity remains modest (around $1.1 million in 30-day x402 volume).
• Security and trust are central concerns, as researchers warn that AI agents can be susceptible to untrusted data flows and malicious prompts, reinforcing the need for robust guardrails and user-confirmation workflows.

How the MCP workflow fits into the evolving AI-on-Chain landscape

At its core, Base MCP functions as an intermediary layer that translates natural-language prompts into concrete blockchain actions, while maintaining human oversight. The user initiates an operation within the AI chat, which then presents a proposed action. The user sees an explicit confirmation step in the Base wallet window, where asset changes are simulated before any real funds are moved. This design preserves security while enabling a more fluid interaction with DeFi protocols through AI agents.

Base’s approach also emphasizes continuity of the user experience. Lincoln Murr has argued that MCP and similar integrations ensure your Base Account remains portable and synchronized across interfaces—whether you’re interacting directly within the Base App or via an AI assistant. This continuity is intended to remove friction that could otherwise hinder adoption of agentic payments, especially if users must jump between separate tools to manage their portfolios.

The MCP initiative sits alongside Coinbase’s broader x402 standard, a framework the company has promoted to enable safe, scalable AI-assisted payments. As MCP matures, developers and users could see more seamless, protocol-bridging transactions that leverage AI agents to navigate liquidity pools, governance actions, and asset transfers with a single chat-based workflow. Yet even with these promises, the path to wide-scale adoption remains gradual, as the $1.1 million 30-day volume figure for x402 indicates a market still in its early innings.

Risks, open questions, and what to watch next

Security remains a central theme in conversations about AI agents in crypto. The research consensus that AI agents can be an “untrusted system component” points to the need for clear separation of commands from data and robust verification checks before any on-chain action is executed. As the AI models gain more capabilities, the potential attack surface grows, making the user-facing confirmation step and simulated preflight checks more important than ever.

Industry developments in the near term will be telling. The Fireblocks collaboration and other industry moves toward agentic payment support suggest a maturation of the technical standards and security practices underpinning these features. Observers will want to watch whether MCP’s adoption accelerates in tandem with x402’s growth, and whether more DeFi protocols come online to respond to AI-driven prompts with trusted, auditable actions.

In addition, regulatory and governance considerations will shape how far AI-assisted on-chain workflows can reasonably scale. Questions about liability, user consent, and data handling will likely influence product design choices and the pace of deployment. For investors and builders, the key is to separate hype from practical utility: MCP’s real value will emerge as more users and protocols participate, and as security guarantees prove resilient in real-world usage.

For now, Base MCP represents a notable experiment at the intersection of AI and on-chain finance, aiming to make complex blockchain operations accessible through natural-language prompts while preserving user control and security. The next chapters will reveal how widely developers embrace the model, how quickly users adopt AI-assisted transactions, and whether the broader market can translate micro-payments into tangible liquidity and new use cases.

Readers should monitor updates from Base on MCP’s roadmap and any expansions to the x402 ecosystem, as well as independent security analyses and regulatory guidance that could influence how and when AI agents become a staple in crypto wallets and DeFi apps. The coming months will indicate whether this approach can scale from experimental tooling to everyday tooling for a broad audience of traders, developers, and crypto-native users.

Bitcoin’s three-month uptrend against gold seems to have ended, as ETF flows shift toward gold and other precious metals.

That’s evident from the bitcoin-to-gold ratio, which measures the per-coin dollar price of BTC against the per-ounce dollar price of gold. This is the chart that tells you which “store of value” investors actually prefer at any given moment.

Since early March, bitcoin has been the clear winner, lifting the ratio higher from roughly 12 points to 18 points.

But not anymore.

The growth has stalled lately, and, over the past 24 hours, it has decisively turned lower, snapping the three-month uptrend.

The ratio has penetrated the uptrend line, characterizing BTC’s mini-bull run against gold. In the world of technical analysis, this is a major breakdown, signaling a renewed shift in momentum in favour of gold.

Why this matters

The signal is not just about lines on the chart, but tells us where the smart money may be headed next.

When the Iran war began in late February, and oil prices shot up to over $100 per barrel, investors looked for a place to park cash. And for a while, they bet on bitcoin as a haven, as evidenced by the upswing in the BTC-gold ratio.

But the same ratio has now invalidated its uptrend, pointing to renewed investor rotation into gold.

Note that chart patterns like trendline breakdowns can and often are fleeting, but for now, the message is clear: gold could outperform BTC in the near-term.

Market flows support that interpretation.

Precious metal ETFs in demand

Exchange-traded funds tied to bitcoin have fallen out of investor favor, losing over $2 billion in two weeks amid a hardening of Treasury yields and the prospect of higher-for-longer interest rates in the U.S.

Meanwhile, gold and precious metal funds are in demand. These funds drew $2.34 billion in investor money during the week ended May 20, extending their inflow streak to a second consecutive week, Reuters reported, citing LSEG Lipper data.

As of writing, bitcoin changed hands near $75,600, down 0.3% from midnight UTC hours and gold traded largely flat around $4,500.

Bankless co-founder David Hoffman said he sold his ETH after reassessing the long-running “ETH is money” thesis. 

In a May 26 X post, Hoffman wrote that Ethereum has earned its current market position, but he sees less room for ETH to receive a new structural rerating from the market.

Hoffman said the sale does not mean he has turned bearish on Ethereum. He said he remains bullish on the network and its ecosystem, while arguing that only part of that growth may flow back to ETH itself. He framed the decision as a capital allocation move after concluding that “the ‘ETH is money’ thesis has played out.”

Ethereum growth may not flow directly to ETH

Hoffman’s argument centers on how Ethereum creates value. He said the network supports applications, layer-2 networks, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and DeFi, but its open-source design gives much of that value back to the ecosystem. 

In his view, Ethereum can grow as infrastructure even if ETH does not capture all of that growth as an asset.

He also pointed to stablecoins as part of that shift. As previously reported in April, Ethereum’s stablecoin supply had reached a record $180 billion, giving the network close to 60% of global stablecoin supply. That supports network use, but it also shows how Ethereum can strengthen dollar-based payment rails rather than only ETH demand.

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Meanwhile, as crypto.news reported, Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation will sell less ETH under a leaner long-term plan focused on security, privacy, openness, and censorship resistance.

L2 activity remains central to the debate

The same value-capture question also appears across Ethereum’s layer-2 roadmap. Hoffman said L2 teams needed freedom to move fast, but also needed stronger ties to the broader Ethereum economy and brand. His point was that Ethereum’s rollup strategy helps scaling, but may leave more margins with L2s and applications.

As previously reported by crypto.news, Gnosis, Zisk, and the Ethereum Foundation launched the Ethereum Economic Zone at EthCC to address L2 fragmentation. The framework targets more than 20 L2s securing about $40 billion in value and aims to standardize ETH as gas across participating networks.

ETH treasuries show another side of demand

Hoffman’s sale comes as some public companies keep building Ethereum-linked treasury strategies. Crypto.news reported that SharpLink secured inclusion in the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 indexes, with the move tied to its Ethereum treasury business and broader institutional crypto exposure.

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That contrast gives the story its market angle. One Ethereum-native voice has moved away from ETH as a personal holding, while some companies continue to build financial products around the asset. 

Hoffman’s position sits between those two views: Ethereum can keep growing, but ETH may no longer offer the rerating he once expected.

The timing also lands during a wider Bankless transition. As crypto.news reported on May 21, Bankless faced backlash over reported staff cuts, while co-founder Ryan Sean Adams said the media brand’s first era had ended. Hoffman’s ETH sale now adds another marker to that shift.

Meanwhile, Ethereum (ETH) traded near $2100 at the time of reporting, indicating 1% decline in the past 24 hours and 2% decline in the past week, based on crypto.news data.

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Base, the Ethereum layer-2 blockchain from crypto exchange Coinbase, has launched a tool to connect Base accounts to artificial intelligence agents for blockchain operations.

Base said on Tuesday that its new Base MCP (Model Context Protocol) allows users to ask AI agents such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT to transfer funds, swap tokens, check balances, review transaction history, and use supported apps within the ecosystem.

The tool lets users manage their crypto directly from an AI model’s chat interface and can also interact with crypto protocols such as Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr and Virtuals, said Base.

The AI agent proposes an action in the chat, then the Base wallet opens in a new window where users can confirm or cancel the transaction. The agent does not have access to private keys, and every action must be confirmed by the user.

Agentic payments have been touted as the next major use case for crypto, as backers argue AI models will have issues accessing the banking system and will need to use digital assets to transact.

Base said that every transaction the agent proposes goes through the same review flow users see for any Base account request, with asset changes simulated before a user confirms.

Lincoln Murr, head of AI Product for Coinbase, told Fortune that “unlike siloed agentic wallets that only live in a terminal, your Base Account travels with you — trades, history, and portfolio sync whether you’re in-agent or in the Base App.”

Base MCP will also expand the adoption of the Coinbase x402 protocol, an agentic AI payment standard the company launched in May 2025.

Related: Fireblocks launches agentic payment support, joins x402 Foundation

Murr described MCP as a “nice wrapper” on top of APIs. Together with x402, it enables a new micro-transaction economy where agents can make tiny payments in crypto.

However, that economy is currently in its early stages, with x402 processing just $1.1 million in volume over the past 30 days, according to x402scan. 

X402 statistics over the past 30 days. Source: x402scan

The use of AI agents for crypto payments has its detractors, with a recent research paper from Google and leading universities saying that AI agents should be treated as an untrusted system component.

The researchers said that AI agents should clearly distinguish between instructions and untrusted data to avoid attackers duping the agent by hiding malicious instructions.

Earlier this week, the developer platform Socket discovered malware targeting crypto developers by injecting hidden instructions to hijack AI coding assistants. 

Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest