The Exchanges

Q Who do you think your biggest competitor is?

A Um, it depends, uh, in what category, because Coinbase does a handful of things. I think, um, you know, if you look at, uh, stablecoins, like we've partnered with Circle on USDC, the biggest competitor to that would be Tether, right, which is offshore. I think, um, on the exchange, like on the crypto exchange side, our biggest competitor is probably Binance, right, which again is offshore. Um, I think if you look at the US market where some of these, Uh, fintech apps are integrating more crypto, you know, and we offer stock trading now. So Robinhood would probably be for our retail apps specifically, like Robinhood is probably the most, um, clear comp. And then, uh, with Coinbase developer platform, which is what it's allowing all these businesses to integrate stable coins, you know, Stripe is probably the best competitor we have there. So, um, yeah, we also run the largest institutional business in crypto. I actually don't think there's like a close competitor for that, at least not One that comes to mind. So yeah, we have a number of different products and, um, competitors in each of those categories. Oh, by the way, one other maybe interesting take on the AI, uh, usage, you know, you're asking about anthropic and all that.

AI assessment note: “our biggest competitor is probably Binance... Robinhood is probably the most, um, clear comp.”

Q I guess, like, taking a step back, what is the broader vision of all these products, and what are you, what is the goal you're building towards?

A Well, the mission of the company is to increase economic freedom in the world, and so, you know, we, we believe that it's important for everybody to have access to good financial services, to have sovereignty of money, like, to have sound money that can't be eroded via inflation, for people to raise money to start a company, or to get a loan, or to make payments all over the world. We want to democratize access, bring down the fees, reduce the friction, and that's how we're going to unlock a lot of prosperity in the economy, and frankly, like for civilizational progress. There's a lot of good research out there on economic freedom and the different countries of the world, and the highest economic freedom countries, it's positively correlated with all kinds of things, not just like higher GDP per capita, it's also correlated with better, like higher happiness, better treatment of the environment, Uh, the poorest 10, 10% of people in those societies are much better off, and it actually is correlated with, believe it or not, like, reduced, uh, corruption, reduced war, um, reduced infant mortality, like, all kinds of things, and so we believe that economic freedom is a foundational, uh, necessity for all civilizational progress, and crypto is this unique technology which can actually update lots of financial services and create more economic freedom in the world.

AI assessment note: “the mission of the company is to increase economic freedom in the world”

Q Do you think the average American or average person thinks that they're economically free? And if not, why?

A I think in the US, um, so it's, it's a tale of two cities. Like on the one hand, the US is one of the more economically free countries in the world. Like people generally trust the dollar. They trust that, um, the government's not going to just come take money out of their bank account without their permission. We, we have, you know, part of what like gave me the appreciation for this, uh, when I was first starting Coinbase is that I had actually spent a year living in Argentina, right? And I saw that country go, go through hyperinflation. And it was just like a, like a basically a hundred year history of the government kind of stealing wealth from people in various ways. And so you have to remember, if you've only grown, people have only spent time in the US, there's many countries in the world where we, we sort of take these things for granted in the US. That is not the normal state of the world for most people in the world. But even in the United States, I would say our financial system is, needs an update, a massive update, because if you survey Americans, something like 80, I think 83% of them say that the financial system is not currently working for them, and they say the fees are too high, You know, overdraft fees and, uh, these kind of like, and then they say there's, there's delays. It's hard to move money. They say that there's unequal access. I mean, there's lots of…

AI assessment note: “83% of them say that the financial system is not currently working for them”

Q crushes. Like, I think I tweeted this out months ago, because you guys did the Super Bowl ad, which was super fun, and then you did the earnings calls, which had like the subway racer kind of things, which were really fun. So, how would you take What AI is, is kind of branded as today, and like, how, what would you change about that and the storytelling around it?

A One thing I kind of learned over time was like, don't apologize for what you're doing, right? It's like, have a, have an opinion about the world, how, and how you're improving it, and what you want to see the future, and there's going to be lots of people out there with their own agendas, they're going to try to build their own status by trying to tear you down. I think the AI companies, um, They've been a little bit, Like, first, there's too much fear mongering, right? Like, this is going to take everyone's jobs, and you should come regulate us, and I, I don't think that's helpful or necessary. Um, and then I think that, you know, if I were in their shoes, I would just be a little bit more unapologetic about it. Like, look, we're building this because we think it's going to be an incredible benefit to humanity, and everyone can have their own, um, AI tutor. Like, you can have a good mentor, you can have a therapist, you can have a better doctor, like, you know, and it's, For anybody sitting there saying that, um, well, you know, this, I already have a great doctor. I would never use an AI. It's like, well, that's, you're sitting there from a position of privilege. Like, many people in the world don't have the best access to the best doctors of the world, and, like, these AI agents are going to create a world of abundance, and so we're going forward, and, you know, if you don't…

AI assessment note: “if I were in their shoes, I would just be a little bit more unapologetic”

Q You mentioned this in an interview you did with David Sendra, where you were talking about the New York Times hit piece, and you said that you think everybody should have a New York Times hit piece. What did that teach you? What happened there, by the way, for the people who don't know the context?

A Yeah, well, this was after we put out the Mission First blog post where we said, we're going to focus on work at work, and if you want to do political activism stuff not related to the mission, that's fine, but just don't do it at work. You can do it outside of work. And, um, yeah, I mean, the SEC, or not the SEC, sorry, the New York Times, um, at this point, it was just, I guess that was just against their worldview, and so people told me later, um, what happened internally is they said, Basically just, they put a team together to go write negative articles about Coinbase, so they sort of, they had the, they had the headline written before they'd even asked anybody what the news was, because, you know, in my view, the New York Times is more of like a political propaganda arm than it is doing any real journal, journalism at this point. Um, so that was frustrating at the time. I was like, oh man, these negative articles are coming out. But very quickly, I realized, um, it just didn't matter, you know?

AI assessment note: “But very quickly, I realized, um, it just didn't matter, you know?”

Q other conversations I've had, I've been really curious, like, of the research, of the historical references that the CEOs are using to build their companies. So for you, Argentina, are there any other kinds of instances that you, you've been learning from of other economies? And if you did have to start one today, I'm assuming you are doing that here, but like, what would the main building blocks be?

A Yeah, ok, so I'm definitely a student and fan of free market capitalism. You know, we believe that capitalism is a force for good in the world. To me, that's like a fairly obvious thing. Um, I'd say probably amongst the general population or college campuses, maybe that's like a controversial view in this moment, but we're, we're unapologetic about it. We believe capitalism is a good thing, and we want everybody to have a piece of it, right? Uh, capitalism lifts everybody up. Um, it doesn't create equal outcomes. I actually don't think you want that. You want high growth that lifts everyone up. And so, um, we very much believe that crypto is free market oriented, which can enable all these things, and we want to democratize access for everyone to participate, um, in capitalism. You know, some of the influences when I was, uh, right, just founding Coinbase, you know, I had been reading a lot of, um, Milton Friedman, you know, there's like this great TV series from, I think the eighties called Free to, Free to Choose, you can see it on YouTube, where he goes through a bunch of interesting economics examples. Um, you know, I'd been reading some Ayn Rand and things like that, right? Just celebrating builders and people who can go, um, move civilization forward. And, you know, I think lots of people have been very, uh, very clear on this. So those were some of the influences. And I …

AI assessment note: “You know, some of the influences when I was, uh, right, just founding Coinbase”