The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 33 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Armstrong: Internal political activism was a major distraction at Coinbase
“We weren't aligned internally about being apolitical. And we had a small vocal percentage of the company just kind of who thought we should be engaging in all these social issues. So it was a major distraction internally.”
Brian Armstrong calls Sam Bankman-Fried brilliant and praises FTX execution speed
“I think Sam is a brilliant guy. I've gotten a chance to talk to him on a number of occasions. I think he's done a really good job of kind of generating interest in the company with his public persona, which is something that, you know, as more of an introvert,…”
Armstrong: Gary Gensler failed to create clear crypto rules and has been uncooperative
“I think that he had a major opportunity to come in and actually like clearly regulate the industry and publish clear rules and say, this is a security. This is not work with the CFTC and other areas of government to kind of create a clear framework, which prot…”
Armstrong: Bitcoin community is ideological; Ethereum community is pragmatic technologists
“The Bitcoin group, I would say they had a lot of people join early on that were kind of more ideologically motivated or perhaps pedantic... And the Ethereum community I would describe as more like technologists or people who just want to focus on the underlyin…”
Armstrong: NFTs will return in the next crypto cycle
“I think NFTs will come back in the next cycle.”
Armstrong: Financial freedom is necessary for all other freedoms
“If you can't like store your own wealth in a way that it can't be taken from you, then you probably don't have freedom in any other thing.”
Armstrong: FTX and Binance took riskier international regulatory paths than Coinbase
“I think generally, I think both FTX and Binance have been really good at execution and You know, they've taken a different risk posture, I would say, internationally as well, which, you know, we'll, we'll see, have to see what happens with that. But Coinbase i…”
Brian Armstrong: Crypto brands must stand up to bad government occasionally
“This is where like we often struggle as a company where, you know, 95% of the time, I think being the most trusted brand in the space is about working with the government. And I'm happy to show up in D.C. Anywhere, and I work with people, and we, 95% of the ti…”
Armstrong: Coinbase will evolve into a holding company of decentralized units
“The future is a little hard to predict, but look, here's one vision I've had for it, which is that I think Coinbase Global, the parent company is starting to become more like a holding company over time. And we have this portfolio of different products, differ…”
Armstrong: ICOs face short-term correction before broad long-term adoption
“So I think the long-term trend for ICOs is very positive, or token sales. I think that's a new thing that's been invented, and it will probably get a lot of adoption. I think in the short term, we'll probably see a correction on it, if I had to guess.”
Armstrong: ICOs will disrupt venture capital over next two to ten years
“If this trend around ICOs goes through its correction period and then continues to get traction, which I believe it will, it's hard to say on what timeframe, but let's say, you know, over the next two to 10 years or something like that, I do think that is pret…”
Armstrong: Political and governance issues, not tech, block crypto scaling
“Actually, the biggest challenge in scaling digital currencies right now is not a technical one. I think it's a political one or a governance one, if you want to call it that.”
Armstrong: Digital currencies will reach Visa-level transaction throughput
“I think there's nothing preventing digital currency from getting to Visa level. If today Ethereum can do somewhere between 10 and 25 transactions a second, that's really only two or three orders of magnitude away from Visa scale.”
Armstrong: Frictionless crypto payments will exceed Visa volume by 10x
“I actually think if payments become as low friction as I think they will in the future, you know, you could be doing dozens of payments as you walk down the street, or your phone as you're browsing websites, or like, we'll actually see an order of magnitude in…”
Armstrong: Institutional clients continue signing up for Coinbase at a massive rate
“Institutions are still signing up at a massive rate.”
Armstrong: Personal consumption is wasteful unless it increases productivity or family time
“I think most personal consumption, unless it's there to basically help your productivity or to just give you more time with loved ones is kind of a waste.”
Armstrong: Coinbase overhired in 2021 and it was a mistake
“We over hired, I would say in 20, 21. That was a mistake.”
Armstrong: Coinbase remains neutral and supports all safe digital assets
“At Coinbase, we're not really pro one digital currency or another. We're in a situation where we're actually looking to support all digital currencies that people want to trade that are safe with some reasonable threshold.”
Armstrong: Scaling YouTube or Twitter was harder than scaling Bitcoin or Ethereum
“I don't think, like, Bitcoin or Ethereum is on the order of magnitude of that heart of a problem. Like, I think scaling YouTube was probably way harder, or scaling Twitter or something like that was probably way harder than the kind of things we need to do to …”
Armstrong: Coinbase's Toshi is the Netscape moment for digital currency
“So that's what we're doing with Toshi, which is really kind of like a browser for the Ethereum network. It's kind of like the Netscape moment, if you will, for digital currency, and that we've made it dramatically easier for people to use digital currency apps…”
Armstrong: Entrepreneurs face existential crisis when fear-based motivation wanes
“I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs kind of go through this existential moment of crisis after they start to lose the initial thing that was driving them like fear, anger, and then they have to move towards, you know, something that brings them actual joy or love…”
Armstrong: Startup goals are largely secured once 60% to 70% complete
“I don't usually by the time I accomplished some goal that I've set, maybe I've worked on it for years by the time I actually hit it. I'm usually don't not even thinking about it. I'm like, cause you know, by the time you're at like, 60%, 70%, you're like, oh m…”
Armstrong: I have never fired an employee in anger on the spot
“And I, frankly, I've never done that once in my whole life. I've never fired somebody in anger in the moment, right?”
Armstrong: Corporate PR speak during public crises only angers people further
“They just want to hear like, okay, here's the part that we could have done better. And here's the part by the way, that's misinformation. And just. If you, if it is true, the world seems to like, believe it and they'll go back to focusing on something else. An…”
Armstrong: Companies need single directly responsible individuals to prevent vetocracies
“Often in big companies, You'll get these, like, kind of V talker sees of there's like seven people, 10 people involved in this thing, and each one of them thinks they can veto or whatever if they don't agree. And then you basically end up having a committee, d…”
Coinbase public status unlocked deals with BlackRock and Meta
“We've been able to close deals with, you know, BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, and, you know, Meta, formerly Facebook, like we're now, especially with our Coinbase cloud business and things like that, we're now able to power things with Fort…”
Coinbase raised $3B debt in one week with zero CEO meetings
“You know, I was kind of surprised to learn that like in, in 20, 21 you know, our CFO came to me and it was like the, you know, the markets are really good. The debt terms are really good. We should probably stock up for the next, you know, if there's another c…”
Armstrong: The 2022 market downturn is an 'everything winter,' not crypto-specific
“The main thing is that the macro environment is down too. So it's not really a crypto winter. It's a, it's an everything winter. It's a macro winter.”
Armstrong: Having children does not harm executive productivity
“Taking care of someone or something actually doesn't harm your productivity. It makes you, it makes your day more fulfilling and you can still be very productive.”
Armstrong: Coinbase generated $7B revenue and $3B profit in 2021
“We did do, we did seven billion in revenue, three billion in profit.”
Armstrong: Y Combinator's core value to founders is confidence, not money
“Y Combinator, there's sort of this underappreciated aspect of it where they make young people who are not quite confident in their decision about what they want to build in the world a little bit more confident just by giving them the money. It's actually the …”
Armstrong: Digital currency will bring financial services to 2.5B unbanked people
“There's a lot of people today who don't have access to the financial system, 2.5 billion people actually, according to the Gates Foundation, I think digital currency will bring financial services to them.”
Armstrong: Bain's RAPID decision framework is effective for companies over 500 people
“We also use a decision-making framework called RAPID R-A-P-I-D, which Bain developed And it's, I found it to be pretty helpful as a, as an organization gets to be more than, I don't know, 500 people where you just can't really keep track of who everyone is and…”