John O’Loghlen, managing director for APAC at Coinbase / Courtesy of Coinbase
HONG KONG — Coinbase expressed excitement about Kakao Pay’s participation in the x402 Foundation, saying the fintech firm’s deep penetration in the Korean market could create compelling use cases, particularly in the K-pop economy.
Led by Coinbase, x402 aims to build a global, internet-native payment protocol and enable agentic payments at scale. Under the model, artificial intelligence (AI) accesses a service or product, the server returns a price, and if the cost falls within a preset budget, payment can automatically be made using stablecoins. Kakao Pay is the only Korean member among global giants participating in the initiative, including Google, Visa, AWS and Circle.
“If you’re a K-pop star, and you’re trying to sell merch, you can automatically let AI drive this,” John O’Loghlen, managing director for APAC at Coinbase, said in an exclusive interview with The Korea Times. “Forget about Shopify and all those traditional tools. Effectively, you can do this yourself with x402, removing middlemen and letting users be empowered to manage this on their own.”
Starting as an exchange, Coinbase has evolved into a digital asset empire, building a complex ecosystem that includes its own blockchain, a super app and an aggressive mergers and acquisitions strategy, while also actively engaging in industry policy efforts. It was also the first cryptocurrency exchange to go public, listing on the Nasdaq in April 2021.
Now, the company has bigger ambitions to become an “everything exchange.” It aims to expand the range of tradable assets — not only in crypto but also in traditional finance — and create a seamless experience for retail users, institutions and developers.
In addition to the payment capabilities offered through x402, O’Loghlen said Coinbase wants to list more non-U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins, including Korean won-based stablecoins, enabling a wider range of currency pairs to be traded on the exchange.
An illustration of Coinbase and bitcoin / AFP-Yonhap
He noted that while 98 percent of global stablecoin trading volume remains concentrated in U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, only 66 percent of trading volume in traditional foreign exchange markets involves the U.S. dollar.
He added that once more local currency-denominated stablecoins emerge and achieve sufficient liquidity, trading patterns could begin to mirror those of traditional foreign exchange markets. He cited remittances by migrant workers, foreign student payments and settlements by major e-commerce platforms as potential use cases.
“Our goal as a company is economic freedom to bring a billion people on chain this year,” O’Loghlen said.
While O’Loghlen described Korea as a competitive market under review, he indicated that Coinbase has no imminent plans to enter. The company’s current core focus markets in the Asia-Pacific region are India, Australia and Singapore, he said.
In January, domestic media reported that Coinbase was in discussions to acquire Coinone, one of Korea’s cryptocurrency exchanges. O’Loghlen declined to comment on the matter, while Coinone firmly denied the report.
“Korea is on our radar. We know it’s an important market. We haven’t made a commitment to Korea as of yet, but we want to keep growing the business,” O’Loghlen said.
O’Loghlen said that because Korea already has a highly competitive and fast-paced digital asset market, overseas firms seeking success must be prepared to compete with strong local exchanges. He added that entering the market takes time, as it requires “cultural sophistication” and a reliable local partner, particularly for a U.S.-listed company like Coinbase, which reports to the SEC and complies with a range of regulatory obligations.
“Coinbase is on a big international journey. It’s really only four or five years into that journey, albeit as a 12- or 13-year-old company. The international journey is really just taking off, and that’s exciting,” he said.