Institutional & AI Adoption is Surging on Coinbase's Base! | Xen Baynham Herd
June 4, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 2016, Xen Baynham-Herd was a derivatives trader at UBS working on a weekend hobby project: tokenizing central bank deposits into a cash-backed stablecoin for interbank settlement. That project eventually spun out into a settlement layer called Finality. Nearly a decade later, Baynham-Herd is now Head of Growth at Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain built on Ethereum. And the institutional world that was barely curious in 2016 is now arriving in force.
What Base Is and Why It Exists
Base is described by Baynham-Herd as "the blockchain for trading, for payments, and for agents." It was built as an Ethereum L2 specifically to solve the scaling problem that made earlier blockchains too slow and expensive for mass adoption. The design goal was to provide sub-cent fees, fast transaction finality, and the capacity to handle trillions of dollars in stablecoin volume. The network currently processes millions of assets and is performing well under the load of both retail users and the growing wave of institutional activity.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Intro & Host Welcome** - Tony Edward and Amanda Witcraft introduce the episode and guest Xen Baynham Herd, Head of Growth at Base.
- 2 (04:05) **Guest Background: From UBS to Crypto** - Xen describes his career path from derivatives trader at UBS to leading an early stablecoin project (Utility Settlement Coin) in 2016, then to blockchain.com, the Network State project, founding Rome (acquired by Coinbase), and now Base.
- 3 (06:09) **Early Institutional Stablecoin Exploration** - Xen details the small team and hobby-like nature of the UBS stablecoin project, noting the challenge of convincing internal and external stakeholders.
- 4 (07:23) **How Institutional Background Helps Base** - Xen explains how his derivatives trading experience is useful for crypto's financial primitives, and his consumer product experience helps Base serve both institutional and retail users.
- 5 (08:04) **Base Overview: The Open Economy** - Xen defines Base as a blockchain for trading, payments, and agents, built for fast, low-cost settlement.
- 6 (09:14) **Current Adoption Trends: Institutions Surging** - Despite a challenging market, Xen highlights incredible fundamentals as major banks (BlackRock, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley) are committing to adopt the technology.
- 7 (10:18) **Visa Partnership & Stablecoin Settlement** - Xen explains Visa's pilot adding Base to its global stablecoin settlement network, enabling instant, low-cost, 24/7 payments for millions.
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Show Notes
Topics:
- Visa added Base to its global stablecoin settlement network
- Tokenization and stablecoins on Base
- AI Agents and Robotics on Base
- Will Base launch its own native token?
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⏰ Time Stamps ⏰
00:00 Intro
03:12 Xen's background
31:31 Wrap up questions
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