Armstrong: Legacy financial services hold back innovation and human progress
Brian Armstrong · Coinbase: Brian Armstrong · Nov 15, 2021 · at 21:24
Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong explains what motivated him to pursue cryptocurrency after observing payment friction and hyperinflation during his earlier career and travels.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Financial services is really holding back innovation in the world. And it's holding back human progress because people don't have the freedom to participate in this global economy because of all the barriers to innovation.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Brian Armstrong
Armstrong: Unanimous consensus committees miss breakthrough innovations
“I think there's a real danger in consensus, especially when you're talking about real breakthrough innovation, because yes, Every breakthrough innovation looks like a bad idea, but it's actually a good idea, and so you, I think you really want to avoid, like, …”
Armstrong: Less than 1% of crypto transactions are for illicit purposes
“And so the best data that I have on it today, like over the last couple of years, is that crypto transactions, it's less than one percent are for illicit purposes.”
Armstrong: Only 5% of Coinbase employees took severance after 'no politics' memo
“It turned out it was about five percent of the company. We offered this exit package to people, anybody who was not on the same page and wanted to make it all win-win, about five percent of the company decided to take the exit package”
Armstrong: Crypto could become 20% of global GDP within two decades
“Crypto as a whole industry, I think could become 10, 20% of global GDP, like in maybe 10 or 20 years, something like that.”
Armstrong: Coinbase preferred shutting down over pivoting to enterprise banking software
“If we have to pivot this company to be an enterprise software company, I think we maybe just want to shut it down and return capital to investors. Cause like, I just didn't want to run that company. Like we really were in it for the mission. We were a mission …”