Speaker 1: Hey, folks, I've got Brian Armstrong's CEO of Coinbase with me. Brian,
Speaker 1: great to see you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brian, congrats on old success. I've been a user
Speaker 1: of coinbase since twenty sixteen ish. Watch you grow from
Speaker 1: a small exchange to doing an IPO to major acquisitions.
Speaker 1: How has your or has your vision for the company change,
Speaker 1: and what's your vision look like for the next five years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, coinba started out as just a trading
Speaker 2: platform and people came in to buy one of the
Speaker 2: twenty one million bitcoin that'll ever be created or a
Speaker 2: fraction of one. And over time, we you know, we
Speaker 2: added more crypto assets, but we realized that crypto was
Speaker 2: going to go way beyond just being a trading platform. Sure,
Speaker 2: and so what's really exciting is we're now seeing the
Speaker 2: mass adoption of stable coin payments.
Speaker 3: You know, that grew fifty percent year over year.
Speaker 2: The stable cooin aum totally uncorrelated to crypto trading volumes,
Speaker 2: by the way. Yeah, and now we're seeing people to
Speaker 2: do loans using DeFi and so crypto is really updating
Speaker 2: all financial services. It's not just about trading anymore. And
Speaker 2: you know, the stable coin moment is really here, like
Speaker 2: Coinbase is getting into payments in a big way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was announced today Coinbase for Business as
Speaker 1: well as an integration with Shopify. So do you see
Speaker 1: that being the untapped market the business sector bringing those
Speaker 1: folks on chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, businesses are one of the early adopters of
Speaker 2: on chain payments because they have a really high pain point.
Speaker 2: You know, businesses they have to pay contractors, employees, vendors
Speaker 2: around the world, different countries.
Speaker 3: There's FX fees, there's delays.
Speaker 2: And of course they have to receive money from customers
Speaker 2: as well, and so that's a challenge. And you know,
Speaker 2: as you pointed out, we we've actually served large businesses
Speaker 2: financial institutions for a long time. We serve over two
Speaker 2: hundred financial institutions like black Rock and PayPal and Stripe.
Speaker 2: But today we're announcing a new product for startups and
Speaker 2: medium sized businesses called coinbas Business, and that has a
Speaker 2: powerful suite of stable coin payment APIs baked into it
Speaker 2: as well. So that's how we're hoping to power this
Speaker 2: for businesses. And you know you mentioned we also announced
Speaker 2: the partnership with Shopify, so consumers can now pay using
Speaker 2: SDC on base with Shopify merchants, So we're really trying
Speaker 2: to tackle all these different pieces of payments and update
Speaker 2: the system.
Speaker 1: And there's also a credit card that you're going to launch,
Speaker 1: the coinbase one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well so, yeah, we launched a bitcoin credit card
Speaker 2: today in partnership with AMES and it gives you up
Speaker 2: to four percent cash back in bitcoin for every purchase
Speaker 2: that you make. So a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 2: you get you can get rewards on cards, but they
Speaker 2: don't have as much value or they lose value. I
Speaker 2: think for our core audience, they want to they want
Speaker 2: to get bitcoin back something that will go up in
Speaker 2: value over time. So that was a really cool partnership
Speaker 2: with MS and it's just helping people be able to
Speaker 2: spend crypto anywhere around the world.
Speaker 3: That's exciting and I love that.
Speaker 1: I personally have used other apps to spend and earn
Speaker 1: bitcoin back. I'm gonna use that card. So, Brian, what
Speaker 1: is your outlook on the crypto market as far as legislation.
Speaker 1: Do you expect the stable coin Bill and the Market
Speaker 1: Structure Bill to get pass this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we're incredibly excited about the progress on legislation.
Speaker 2: I got to give a lot of credit to this
Speaker 2: administration and the Senate and the House that are driving
Speaker 2: this forward. So there's a bill called the Genius Act
Speaker 2: for Stable Coins going through the Senate right now, which
Speaker 2: has a lot of bipartisan support and momentum. And then
Speaker 2: we saw something called Declarity Act, which is for market
Speaker 2: structural legislation and crypto coming out of the House. So
Speaker 2: my hope is that by some combination or you know,
Speaker 2: one after the other, these will become law. And you know,
Speaker 2: President Trump has said that he wants these to be
Speaker 2: brought into law by the August recess. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: we're just incredibly thankful and happy for everything that Congress
Speaker 2: and this administration is doing.
Speaker 1: Brian, when you first got into crypto, we were nowhere
Speaker 1: where we're at now. Do you sometimes pinch yourself and like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of surreal where we've come and now
Speaker 1: we're at.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the nature of entrepreneurship is you have
Speaker 2: some kind of contrarian idea and early on a lot
Speaker 2: of people thought we were crazy. You know, I had
Speaker 2: venture capitalists like you know, a lot got a lot
Speaker 2: of no's. I had bank banks like hang up on
Speaker 2: us or deep Bank US and so, you know, it
Speaker 2: took a long time to get here, and I in
Speaker 2: my wildest dreams, I thought maybe someday, maybe the President
Speaker 2: of the United States would say the word bitcoin. And
Speaker 2: now we have, you know, kind of the most pro
Speaker 2: crypto president and it's a bipartisan issue, and it's like
Speaker 2: probably the most bipartisan issue in the United States government.
Speaker 2: So it's great if we can get legislation passed. It'll
Speaker 2: ensure that this industry can get built here in America
Speaker 2: and ultimately we want it to be everywhere around the world.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Final question, what are you most excited about for
Speaker 1: crypto moving forward? Is it a certain sector? Is this
Speaker 1: just the macro in general as far as adoption and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, right now, our core focus is on trading
Speaker 2: and payments. Those are our core businesses. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot of things on the horizon that I'm also excited about.
Speaker 2: You know, the way that capital formation happens could be
Speaker 2: much more efficient on chain, everything from how people incorporate
Speaker 2: issue shares, raise money, you know, token is securities. I
Speaker 2: think these will all be big areas. I think that
Speaker 2: AI agents are going to use stable coin payments and
Speaker 2: so there's a whole concept of agentic commerce that we're
Speaker 2: trying to help enable through products like coinba Commerce, And
Speaker 2: you know, we have a lot of cool venture bets.
Speaker 3: Base is our layer two solution.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are now building new applications on chain,
Speaker 2: and we have a cool announcement later this year about
Speaker 2: how we're updating ourself custodial wallet. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of cool things on the horizon, but our core is
Speaker 2: really trading in payments for this year, and.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the key to getting adoption, having
Speaker 1: folks be able to move money faster, transact with merchants
Speaker 1: that they love, businesses that they love. So great stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drives utility awesome, Brian, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.