The head of the largest crypto exchange in the US shares his thoughts on the present and future of the industry.
In a new interview with CNBC’s Crypto World, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tells host Kate Rooney that he believes Big Tech companies like BlackRock and Meta will all participate in the next phase of the crypto-powered internet.
“We want every company in the world to integrate into crypto. Just like we want every business to have a presence on the internet or use the internet in some way. Even if they are not an internet business, they will have a homepage or maybe get new customers over the internet or accept payments.
Crypto is the same way. I think Big Tech is going to play a part in that. We see companies like BlackRock, the largest asset manager out there, now integrated with Coinbase. Meta was another great example.
It shows me that we can really win, not only a large retail customer segment, but we can also close deals with the biggest companies in the world like Coinbase. That bodes well for our future.”
When it comes to the crypto winter that has been hampering the industry since late last year, the tech entrepreneur hopes to see a turnaround sometime before mid-2023.
“Obviously we’re in a downward spiral, but it’s not unusual for us. We have gone through four of these cycles as a company and we are only 10 years old.
This one just happens to coincide with the broader macro environment coming down. We all hope it’s 12, 18 months and [then a] nice recovery, but of course you have to take into account that it takes longer. We try not to get too cute about predicting the future.”
Armstrong adds that Coinbase remains focused on its long-term goals rather than fluctuations in the price charts.
“We have this saying internally that I like to repeat, which is, ‘It’s never as good as it looks. It’s never as bad as it seems.’
I think one of the reasons Coinbase has been so successful over the past 10 years is that we don’t focus on short-term ups and downs. We just zoom out and think about, ‘Will more people start using crypto in five, ten years? Probably. Is the internet spreading more widely? Probably. Will there be more e-commerce and more digital payments?’
These are all headwinds that are long-term trends. If we don’t get distracted and keep making great products, we’ll do well for the next five or ten years.”
The CEO concludes by saying that he is encouraged by how extended staking is improving the crypto space, especially projects such as Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP) and Solana (SOL).
“[Staking is] important to make these blockchains more scalable. We see Ethereum getting closer and closer to the Merge, which is upgrading to Ethereum 2.0, and that will be a nice step on the upgrade journey [and] get more scalability from Ethereum.
We also see this with other blockchains. The Lightning Network is really great in that direction. We see good things with layer 2 solutions [like] Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism. Solana is also doing very well in scaling, so good progress across the board with staking.”
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