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 63 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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: Biden administration unlawfully tried to kill US crypto industry
“The Biden administration really tried to unlawfully kill this industry in America”
Armstrong: SEC settlement offer required delisting all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin
“The settlement option on the table was to essentially delist everything other than Bitcoin, and so that would have been the end of the industry in the US.”
Armstrong: Sam Bankman-Fried likely committed fraud and lied to FTX investors
“I mean, that that's the moment in my mind where he crossed the line into probably committing fraud. And I think he probably lied to users lied to investors.”
Armstrong: Undoing the GENIUS Act is a red line for Coinbase
“I think there's the bank trade groups, which I believe are trying to undo the genius act. Got it. It just got passed into law four months ago. And for us, that's a red line.”
Armstrong estimates 20% of California billionaires left, creating $10B tax deficit
“My estimates would probably be 20% of the billionaires have already left in California, that it's already created a negative ten billion tax hole, even if, even with the amount that they hope to raise from the people who stay.”
Armstrong: SEC Chair Gensler weaponized the agency for political purposes
“Unfortunately, we have a regulator the chair of the SEC, who's kind of weaponized the agency for his own political purposes.”
Armstrong: Gensler and Warren do not want crypto in the US
“Right, along with Elizabeth Warren, who, they just don't want crypto to exist in the United States.”
Armstrong: SEC currently offers no mechanism to register crypto securities
“There is not currently a way to register, and so, they've been sort of talking out of both sides of their mouth, and then saying, hey, just come and register, and then you see these exchanges come in that have never traded a single coin as, like, you know, the…”
Armstrong: Tether is not compliant under the US GENIUS Act
“It's not currently compliant under the genius act in the U S and so it doesn't follow those same hundred percent reserves in short term U S treasuries is my understanding.”
Armstrong: All assets are coming on-chain for trading
“So anyway, we're long, I think that, yeah, the biggest trends are all assets are coming on chain for trading. Prediction markets are growing like crazy, and stablecoin payments are growing like crazy. Those are the, probably the three biggest trends in crypto …”
Armstrong: Companies will eventually go public entirely on-chain
“I think eventually, like, you'll actually just be able to go public totally on-chain too.”
Brian Armstrong: Economic growth comes from deregulation and energy, not government spending
“It seems like growth does not come from government spending, right? That's like the key that this is this Keynesian economic argument that I think is basically wrong. Like growth comes from having like deregulation, having low cost energy, allow the private ma…”
Armstrong: AI agents will use stablecoins and crypto wallets for payments
“AI agents, I think, are gonna use stablecoins and wallet, crypto wallets.”
Armstrong: U.S. administrative agencies are de facto creating laws
“What's happened, sort of, is that we've created these agencies, and because they can just send subpoenas to everybody, or publish these guidance letters, you know, this is kind of the administrative state, if you will they are de facto creating laws.”
Armstrong: Biden administration crypto policy pushed tech jobs overseas
“The Biden administration with Warren and Gensler has not been Good for Americans on this dimension, and it's pushed a lot of tech jobs overseas.”
Armstrong: Lack of US crypto regulation caused the FTX collapse
“And that lack of regulatory clarity, I believe has pushed a lot of this business offshore to these less regulated exchanges. That's part of what caused the blow up today.”
Armstrong: FTX US is worth nothing due to brand damage
“I don't necessarily think FTX US is worth anything as a business right now because of the brand being so tainted.”
Armstrong: 5% of Coinbase employees took exit packages during culture transition
“About five percent of the company opted into the exit package package.”
Armstrong: Accredited investor laws are inherently exclusionary
“The danger is if we ever get into a place where we say, well, only wealthy people can now invest because somehow there's an accredited investor test. That's inherently exclusionary. I don't like the accredited investor laws.”
Armstrong: Five of top 20 global banks use Coinbase infrastructure
“Five of the top 20 global banks are now using Coinbase to build their crypto infrastructure into their products.”
Armstrong: 52 million Americans have used cryptocurrency
“There's like, fifty-two million Americans who've used crypto now.”
Armstrong: B2B cross-border payments were crypto's top growth area last year
“So the biggest growth area over the last year has been B to B cross border payments and cross border.”
Armstrong: Coinbase launched Coinbase Tokenized for funds and real estate
“Coinbase launched a product actually called Coinbase tokenized. So we're helping any fund or real estate project or anybody who wants to tokenize their products”
Armstrong: BlackRock and Apollo publicly stated plans to tokenize all products
“BlackRock, Apollo, like these, the top funds in the world are putting, they've come out publicly and said they want to tokenize every single one of their products.”
Armstrong: Four billion adults globally are unbrokered without investment access
“There's actually four billion adults who are unbrokered as well, which means they don't have any ability to invest in these high quality assets.”
Armstrong: California budget rose dramatically over 10 years while services worsened
“The history of the last 10 years in California is that the budget has gone up dramatically and the services have gotten worse.”
Armstrong: New Limit demonstrated cell reprogramming to restore youthful function
“Within the first two or three years, they were able to successfully demonstrate reprogramming of human cells to sort of function they had when they were younger.”
Armstrong: New Limit's first drug candidate likely enters clinical trials next year
“And the first drug candidate is probably going to go into clinical trials next year.”
Brian Armstrong: Poorest populations fare best in high economic freedom nations
“Even the poorest people in society are, they do the best in high economic freedom countries that are, anyway.”
Armstrong: AI job displacement will lead to net economic abundance
“I basically, I think if the AI plays out as we all think it will with robots and a lot of, there will be job displacement, but it means that we'll be in a world of more abundance and people are going to have jobs that there's like, they're streaming on video g…”
Armstrong: Coinbase deployed internal AI agents connected to all company data
“One of the big pushes we made in the last year was we got our own internal hosted AI model that was connected to all of our data sources, right? So it's like every Slack message, every Google doc, every Salesforce data confluence, you know, so now this is all …”
Brian Armstrong: Sam Bankman-Fried should go to jail
“You know, Sam Bankman-Fried should go to jail.”
Armstrong: US banking sector is quasi-nationalized
“They have, in the US, our banks are more privatized than, say, China or most other countries, but they're quasi-nationalized in the US.”
Armstrong: SEC has gone zero for three in cryptocurrency court cases
“The SEC has gone zero for three in the courts.”
Armstrong: Sub-cent, sub-second crypto transactions will trigger explosion of new use cases
“I, the metric I've been tracking internally, and I kind of push our team on, is we need every transaction to get under one cent in 1:02. If that, that feels like a threshold where we'd see an explosion of new use cases.”
Armstrong: Coinbase allocates 5% of resources to legal issues, 95% to products
“Five percent of our resources is gonna go deal with that and make sure that's not an issue. 95% of us are here to build products.”
Armstrong: About half of active Coinbase users engage in non-trading activities
“Now about half our active customers do something other than trading, and it runs the gamut, you know, they're spending crypto with Coinbase card, they're earning staking rewards they're starting to engage in some of these dApps and doing payments with stableco…”
Armstrong: Coinbase's launch in India was shut down after three days
“I've, we launched, and it got shut down three days later, and we're gonna try to relaunch it again, so we need to get it there in emerging markets, too.”
Armstrong: Coinbase customer funds are segregated and backed 1-to-1
“We're a public company. We're regulated. Our financial statements are audited. They can show that, you know, customer funds are segregated. They're backed one to one. We're not investing customer assets without their explicit direction.”
Armstrong told Binance CEO CZ that acquiring FTX was a bad idea
“And I spoke to CZ about why he was considering buying the asset. I thought it was a bad idea.”
Armstrong: 95% of crypto trading volume is outside the US
“95% of the trading volume in crypto is now outside the United States, and it's come down a lot since the beginning of this year even.”
Armstrong: Fundraising tokens are securities, but decentralized utility tokens are not
“If people want to issue a token that's raising money for a company, let's regulate it as a security. If they want to issue a token that's truly on a decentralized protocol, or has some other purpose like voting in a DAO or rewards or something like that, then …”
Armstrong: FTX did about $1B in revenue in 2021
“At that time, FTX did about one billion in revenue.”
Armstrong: Coinbase eliminated open-mic Q&A sessions at company town halls
“So we got rid of the open mics.”
Armstrong: Starting or joining a company is best way to affect change
“I think the best way to affect change right now today is for young people is start a company or join a company.”
Armstrong: China announced interest payments on central bank digital currency
“China just announced that they're going to pay interest on their central bank digital currency.”