Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on bitcoin going to $1 million, electing a pro-crypto Congress, and Jamie Dimon
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Companies are a reflection of their founders. In many ways, probably you don't even realize. Think You're in a pub after all. Within the first few weeks of us working together, he he came back to me at one point. He was like, I'm pretty sure we're losing money every time someone buys Bitcoin. And he walked me through on the whiteboard and he was right. There's the top five or 10 fiat currencies, but the long tail, the other 150 or so government currencies, I think they probably should get replaced. If The US is going to lose the reserve currency status, I'd rather people went to Bitcoin than t
these sad pints. I'm sorry.
It's not meeting the Stripe quality bar. Isn't there some ethos at Stripe about the details really, really, really matter? They do.
But you deserve a delicious creamy pint, not this monstrosity.
I actually was a bartender in grad school. I should know how to do this.
Brian Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Coinbase, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. Founded in 2012, just earlier this year, they became the first crypto company to be added to the S and P 500.
Cheers. John, good to see you. You too. It
feels like a good time to do this and take stock where Stripe was you know, we launched in 2011. Coinbase was founded in 2012, kinda grew up at the same time. Coinbase just added the S and P 500. Genius Act just packed passed. So it's gonna be a good moment to step back and and take stock. Yeah. As you look back on it, like, I think about crypto in, say, the, you know, 2014, 2015 era, it was such a red ocean. There were so many different competitors, and you guys beat so many people to get here. Like, as you look back on it, how did Poinbase win?
Well, yeah, it has been a long journey. I I remember actually seeing you guys go through YC and everything was very inspiring for me. It was like, okay, maybe a fintech company could be built in this area. So I had a lot of aspiration to go through YC in part by seeing what Stripe did. And you're right, in those early days, was wild west. Mean, had to to the early Bitcoin meetups and there was like brilliant cryptography PhDs and also just anarchists and like, was really, I mean, one of the first meetups I went to in San Francisco for Bitcoin, a guy there told me he was starting his own religi
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