We want every company in the world in Crypto, says Coinbase CEO

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong envisions a future where every single company in the world will do crypto.

According to Armstrong, every single company in the future will be integrated into cryptocurrency in the same way that they have a presence on the internet today.

The comments came in a rare interview with CNBCwhere Armstrong laid out his vision for the exchange’s future, including subscription services and regulatory compliance.

Crypto and the web

Forecasts and views of the future appeared in the half-hour interview. Armstrong was asked to predict where the industry was headed on a number of occasions.

On one of these occasions, Armstrong was asked if big tech will play a role in the future of the crypto ecosystem.

“I hope so, I mean we want every company in the world to integrate into crypto,” Armstrong said, comparing today’s crypto ecosystem to the early internet.

“It’s just like saying we want every company to have a presence on the internet or use the internet in some way, even if they’re not an internet company they want to have a website or maybe get new customers via the internet or accept payments . And so, crypto is the same way, I think, and big tech is going to have a role to play,” he said.

As Armstrong sees it, cryptocurrency and its various offshoots, including non-fungible tokens (NFT) and Web3, will eventually become ubiquitous. At this stage, however, these industries are still far from maturity. Armstrong has dubbed the current state of the industry as “Web2.5,” which is easy for critics to paint as too centralized among other issues.

“I see it as just an opportunity to continue to move forward in that direction toward Web3,” Armstrong says.

Tomorrow’s Coinbase

Armstrong was also asked about the future of Coinbase. The company recently changed its business model, moving from a trading fee model to a subscription model with zero trading fees.

Armstrong explained the rationale behind the move, which will make the company more resilient to market shocks and “make our revenue more predictable over the long term.”

Armstrong also explained why the company had recently pulled out of a proposed high-yield product. The CNBC the host told Armstrong that problems at Voyager and Celsius were what caused the company to turn around. Armstrong responded that it was regulatory concerns that prompted them to reconsider, rather than the credit risk profile.

“We want to be the most compliant, the most regulated, the most reliable product out there in the space,” he said. “That’s been our strategy for the last 10 years, and so if there are regulators who have a challenge with what we’re doing, you know we’re going to have a dialogue with them. Unless we strongly disagree with that, I think 90% of the time we’re basically just going to follow the guidance.”

In the shadow of sanctions against Tornado Cash, such strong adherence to compliance and regulatory oversight may give Ethereum users cause for concern. What would happen if regulators ever leaned on Coinbase to censor transactions on the Ethereum blockchain?

According to an Armstrong tweet on August 17th, Armstrong would rather shut down the Ethereum stake on Coinbase than censor the network.

Presumably then, any such request to censor the network from OFAC or another body would fall below the 10% of times Coinbase would run afoul of regulatory oversight.

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