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.
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Armstrong: Bitcoin's Lightning Network Never Really Took Off
“The lightning network was a optimization layer on top of Bitcoin, but it never really took off.”
Armstrong: Financial system should not rely on fractional reserve banking foundation
“In my view, we should have a financial system that does not have fractional reserve as the foundation because it's not a secure foundation to build on, right?”
Armstrong: Capitulating to the SEC would probably have ended US crypto
“If we had, Capitulated, it would have probably spelt the end of the crypto industry in the United States.”
Armstrong: Coinbase has explored issuing a Base token to decentralize
“And we, we've made it through stage zero, stage one. We're partly, partly through the final stage of stage two. And to do that, we've explored issuing a base token and there's a path to potentially decentralizing it over time on that route.”
Armstrong: Global collaboration to pause AI is unrealistic
“So it's hard for me to imagine a realistic scenario where the world collaborates to pause AI.”
Armstrong: AI agents will use crypto wallets over traditional bank cards
“An AI agent is going to have a hard time signing up for a credit card at a bank, and you have to show your ID, which, you know, only human beings currently can get this government-issued piece of paper. But an AI agent can spin up a self-custodial crypto walle…”
Armstrong: Stablecoin issuers operate on 100% reserves unlike fractional banks
“Banks do fractional reserve.
So they've lent out most of the money, and that's partly why they're so heavily regulated.
They're doing fractional reserve.
So in a stablecoin issuer is a hundred percent reserve.
The only risk they're taking is
At most a 93 day U…”
Armstrong: Coinbase to relaunch in India with FIU registration and UPI access
“We're actually planning to relaunch in India on Monday, and we, I believe we're now the first you know, international player in India that has a local license and access to the local payment rails and, You know, we registered with the FIU, and so we've got a l…”
Armstrong: Bitcoin Succeeded as Store of Value, Not Medium of Exchange
“I think it's fair to say at this point that Bitcoin has succeeded as a store of value, and I don't think it has become a medium of exchange.”
Armstrong: Every asset class will be tokenized and brought on-chain
“So we see every asset class being tokenized and brought into on chain to, you know, 24 seven and global liquidity and all this kind of thing”
Armstrong: Open source AI models are six months behind and 99% cheaper
“You know, the open source models are really like six months behind and they're like 99% cheaper or more sometimes for inference.”
Armstrong: AI coding harnesses like Anthropic's are not defensible
“I mean, the coding harnesses to me don't feel like that defensible. You know, they're, that you could, some of them have actually been leaked on the open source. I mean, you could actually like, I think software is basically free, so you could recreate a codin…”
Armstrong: Government frontier tech licensing only helps incumbents and kills startups
“Whenever somebody says this is so scary, everybody should have to come in and get a license from the government. I'm like, well, the government does a lot of things very well, but the one thing they're not great at is like understanding the very frontier of te…”
Armstrong: Coinbase gives any trader equal AWS access to Citadel
“We, we've built this in the cloud where anybody can spin up an AWS instance in the same availability zone and have the same access as Citadel or Jane Street.”
Armstrong: India's 30% crypto tax is among world's most punitive
“I, and I will say, yeah, the 30% tax on trading in India is quite punitive. I think that's actually one of the most punitive regimes anywhere in the world that we operate.”
Armstrong: US crypto market structure bill could reach Senate vote within two months
“The House has already voted on it, so now the two committees in the Senate have to come together to reconcile their drafts, and then it'll hopefully, it could go to full Senate vote in the next month or two, so we'll see.”
Armstrong: AML enforcement seizes only about 1% of illicit global finance
“There's some estimates that only I think about one percent of all illicit activity is frozen or seized as a result of AML activities globally.”
Armstrong: Coinbase passes roughly 90% of USDC yield to users
“But currently today, it's about 90% of the economics, at least on Coinbase, are given to the user. So we are keeping, you know, the 10%.”
Armstrong: Bitcoin white paper is among most important financial documents
“And I actually would encourage anybody to go read the Bitcoin white paper. It's a little bit hard to understand the first time, but I think it's worth trying to read. And it's a, one of the most important documents, you know, written in financial history, righ…”
Armstrong: Coinbase is building an exchange for stocks, FX, and commodities
“One thing we've been doing is just diversifying the set of asset classes that are in, you know, we're building the everything exchange so you can trade stocks and commodities and FX and everything, right? And, you know, index funds.”
Armstrong: Coinbase is working to launch private transactions on Base
“There's also people working on private transactions on, on base including us, for instance. So hopefully we'll be able to launch the first private transactions on base soon as well.”
Armstrong: Coinbase integrating stablecoins with 5 of top 20 world banks
“We were doing stablecoin integrations with five of the 20 largest banks in the world.”
Armstrong: Coinbase stores more crypto than any other company
“We're the company in the world that stores more crypto than anybody else.”
Armstrong: Coinbase gained US regulatory approval for crypto perps and options
“So we actually just today got approval for crypto perps and options tradable by U S people. I think we're the first regulated exchange in the U S to do that.”
Armstrong: The lack of bailouts in crypto is a feature, not a bug
“I actually think there's one nice thing about the crypto markets, which is there's not like a bailout coming, right? Like, you know, if something does take on too much risk and blow up, they suffer the losses. It's not the government that's going to come on th…”
Armstrong: SpaceX holds the best moat of all time in space transit
“I think, like, you know, obviously SpaceX is getting a lot of attention right now that just has a natural moat. Like the best moat of all time would be like, how do you get from Earth to space, you know? And if they're doing 90% of that, that's powerful.”
Armstrong: Philanthropy is like startups where most initiatives fail
“I think I've seen a lot of friends engage in philanthropy and it's just like startups. A lot of it doesn't work, but the best ones do incredible things.”
Armstrong: Four billion people globally are unbrokered without equity access
“So there's something like four billion people in the world today who are unbrokered. They don't have any ability to buy equities.”
Armstrong: Flat Purchasing Power Amid Widening Wealth Drives Social Unrest
“It's if when they're purchasing power or their wages are flat and then someone's getting much, much wealthier, that's what creates like the biggest social unrest, I think.”
Armstrong: Indian government is impressively competent in tech like UPI
“You know, the Indian government has actually done some things very impressive working with, you know, like UPI and these things are incredible.”
Armstrong: Stablecoins enable sub-second, sub-cent payments impossible with credit cards
“You can send a payment anywhere in the world in under one second and one cent US. So we're seeing a lot of agentic commerce send small transactions, even a couple cents US, to, you know, gather, read this research paper, or get through this paywall, and or jus…”
Armstrong: Taking away economic rights takes away all rights
“And if you can take away someone's economic rights you can take away all their rights really, because if you can, if you don't have enough money to have transportation or food or housing, You'll, you know, you can't really express your other rights.”
Armstrong: Proof-of-stake blockchains are 99.9% more energy efficient than proof-of-work
“Ethereum and other blockchains use a new system called proof of stake, which is actually 99.9% more energy efficient.”
Armstrong: Bitcoin ETFs Were Fastest-Growing ETFs in Recent Years
“You might be aware that recently they've become Bitcoin ETFs as well, which have become very popular. I think they were like the fastest growing ETFs of the last few years.”
Armstrong: Coinbase is developing an on-chain payment protocol
“Right now we're making, An on-chain payment protocol.”
Armstrong: India ranks number one globally by crypto user count
“Actually by most reports, India, believe it or not, is the number one crypto country in the world by a number of people who use it.”
Armstrong: Stablecoin volume grows 3x to 4x annually uncorrelated with trading
“Now we're seeing stable coins just grow like crazy, and it's totally uncorrelated with, so even if the trading markets are down stable coins are growing like three or three or four X per year.”
Armstrong: Crypto adoption mirrors the internet's path before broadband and HTTPS
“To make a new financial system, you had, you needed a few things, like you needed scalability of the blockchains to get the cost down and the speed, speed down. You needed regulatory clarity, and then we needed privacy of the transactions. It's actually almost…”
Armstrong: Coinbase aims to become users' primary financial account
“We also want to become the primary financial account for people over time. So they're doing direct deposit and they have Coinbase card and they can get a loan.”
Armstrong: Real estate is the original Bitcoin due to provable scarcity
“In some ways, like real estate is the original Bitcoin because it's like proved provably scarce.”
Armstrong: Base is the most popular Layer 2 on Ethereum
“It's the most popular layer two on top of Ethereum now, and it's, people are using it for all kinds of apps to be built, and payment stable coins, and trading, and AI agents, like agentic commerce is happening on there.”
Armstrong: Most people should be index investors, not active traders
“I think most people should probably not be traders. They should be investors. You know, and dollar cost average, own the index fund, diversify the portfolio, have some, you know, have some in Bitcoin, some in everything, all the different pieces, so.”
Armstrong: Base blockchain transaction fees are about one-tenth of a cent
“Yeah, like in, on the base chain, at least it's about a 10th of a cent US.”
Armstrong: Coinbase lending features use DeFi protocols underneath
“You had mentioned earlier, people on Coinbase can actually choose to lend their money out and earn these yields and things. That's using a DeFi protocol underneath.”
Armstrong: Base has awarded $10,000 grants to Indian developers
“Actually the base chain, we have this program called base grants, and we've given like 10,000 dollar grants to a bunch of different developers in India. And a lot of them, we actually fly them out to Silicon Valley and they do a session where they get mentorsh…”
Armstrong: Large startups in novel areas inevitably attract government scrutiny
“Well, it turns out if you're building in a new area the law is awfully oftentimes unclear. And if your company gets big enough, you will eventually intersect with government. Even if you have no interest in the government will eventually develop an interest in…”