Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Nearly every startup will integrate cryptocurrency within ten years
“And now, you know, I think the same thing is going to happen with cryptocurrency where in five or 10 years, pretty much every startup that gets created, it's going to use the internet, it's going to use AI, and it's also going to use some form of cryptocurrenc…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: One billion people will use open finance within 20 years
“There's a billion people using the open financial system on a daily basis, and, you know, I think that could be done in five years, like, without a lot of hard work, it could be 10 years, 20 years.”
Opinion
Armstrong: Every investor should own one Bitcoin to learn about cryptocurrency
“Should every investor own maybe one Bitcoin? Yes, I think they should. And the reason is not so much as an investment. It's to start learning about this technology Which will be a major influence on finance in the future.”
Prediction Held up
Armstrong: Bitcoin-native applications will create multi-billion dollar companies
“So, these are very small today, but I think in the future some of these will end up being many multi-billion dollar companies and systems.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Bitcoin will be the sole currency used on the blockchain
“I think Bitcoin will be the currency that, that everyone ends up using on the blockchain, and they probably don't quite understand what they're saying when they say that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Bitcoin usage will invert to 80% payments and 20% speculation
“And I think over time what'll happen is that those two percentages will shift. The 80% will end up becoming the 20% speculative asset, and it'll be 80% payment network actually happening.”
Opinion
Armstrong: Bitcoin is the only way to build global, permissionless prediction markets
“Or if you want to build a global crowdfunding site, or a prediction market, or something like that, where people all over the world without having to register can, within a couple seconds, put money into this thing, or see it tip, It's like literally the only …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Mainstream merchants like Starbucks will eventually accept Bitcoin
“Now, someday, if the world, if Bitcoin becomes more and more popular, like we all think it will then yes, even the Starbucks across the street will be accepting Bitcoin, because they still don't want to pay two percent, they'd rather pay a fraction of one perc…”
Insight
Armstrong: Centralized national digital currencies miss the entire point of cryptocurrency
“I am skeptical of countries like Ecuador saying they're going to create their own digital currency, since if you centralize a digital currency, it seems to miss the whole point in my book.”
Prediction Held up
Armstrong: Crypto won't have one dominant protocol, but several competing standards
“I think, ah, you know, now I think of it as a slightly different mental model, so it's not TCP IP that's one protocol to rule them all. There's gonna be a couple of these, you know, like Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or GIF, JPEG, PNG, if you wanna use an intern…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Next wave of crypto adoption comes from earning, not buying
“So I think most of those people in the world, they don't have, you know, disposable income to kind of invest in risky new technologies. They're going to get crypto for the first time by, you know, completing some task or job because they want to earn money or,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Digital natives will value online identities over physical locations
“And I think it'll flip at some point where it's like this mentality shift of, you know, am I, are you first is, you know, people have all different types of identities, right? Is my primary identity you know, the school I went to, like, you know, this military…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: 90% of 2018 crypto activity is investment and speculation
“I think still 90% of what people are doing with crypto is investment or speculation, and that's great as an initial way to get people's interest into crypto, but it's more interesting to think about, you know, the utility phase, which is this 10%”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Future generations will never own traditional checkbook bank accounts
“There's going to be this whole generation of kids that grow up, and their phone is the only bank account they've ever known. They're never going to have a bank account in the way we think of it with a checkbook or something like that”
Opinion
Armstrong: Greek government misunderstands blockchain when proposing state cryptocurrency
“If the Greek government is talking about Making some kind of their own currency and having on a blockchain. I think they don't really understand what blockchain means when they say that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Developing world's first bank accounts will be mobile crypto wallets
“And we think a whole generation of kids and people in the developing world will actually grow up, and their very first quote unquote bank account will actually be a digital currency wallet on their cell phone.”
Assertion Supported
Armstrong: Bitcoin GitHub repositories outpace traditional payment systems like PayPal
“There's about 6000 total to date, which is outpacing the number of GitHub repositories for other common payment systems like PayPal.”
Opinion
Armstrong: Blockchain is for asset tokenization, not custom currencies
“When I hear people talking about creating all sorts of other currencies and putting it on the blockchain, I'm always, I'm a little bit skeptical of that. I think what they're talking about really is like, you can digitize any various types of assets and transf…”
Insight
Armstrong: Bitcoin is a global value protocol as big as the internet
“The Internet was such a transformative thing in society. It's this global decentralized protocol for moving information around. But here was another protocol that was also global and decentralized, but it was for moving value around, or money. And I remember t…”
Prediction Held up
Armstrong plans to scale Coinbase and run a public company
“For me, I actually want to be a CEO, run a business, have it be enormous, like, I'd like to run a public company someday”
Insight
Armstrong: Mainstream crypto adoption requires scalability, stablecoins, and better dev tools
“It's like, we've got to get the scalability of the networks up. The volatility of the coins probably needs to come down, or stable coins, which is like this whole, you know, area of research happening right now with like a dozen teams is going to be a really g…”
Assertion Supported
Armstrong: Only 40 million people worldwide own cryptocurrency in 2018
“I mean, so there, there's only about forty million people in the world today who have a little bit of crypto, and most of them have gotten into it by buying a little bit as an investment.”
Insight
Armstrong: Volatility is a feature for investors but a bug for payments
“Volatility is actually a feature if you want to be an investor, but it's a bug if you want to just have a medium of exchange.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Open financial networks will expand global economic freedom and property rights
“We think that's going to bring about all kinds of benefits for the world, you know, a lot of innovation, quality of opportunity, economic freedom, strong property rights for people all over the world.”
Brian Armstrong