Coinbase’s Armstrong still sees path for US crypto legislation

Investing.com -- Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong remains optimistic about comprehensive U.S. crypto legislation despite helping to derail a bill last week before it reached a Senate committee.

Armstrong withdrew support for the latest draft of digital asset market structure legislation in a January 14 social media post. Hours later, Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott postponed a planned markup. In an interview with Bloomberg News at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Armstrong explained he opposed the draft because it contained "too many giveaways to tradfi."

"I’m not seeing any real barriers here," Armstrong said regarding the path forward for the market-structure bill. "There are some people a little grumpy, I think they got caught off guard that we didn’t support the draft as-is."

The banking industry has strongly opposed crypto firms offering rewards tied to stablecoin balances, arguing such offerings could drain deposits from banks and weaken community lending.

"The bank lobbying groups and bank associations are out there trying to ban their competition," Armstrong said. "I have zero tolerance for that, I think it’s un-American and it harms consumers."

Despite legislative challenges, Armstrong called 2025 a banner year for crypto, highlighting the July passage of the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers. Since then, financial institutions have shown increased interest in digital assets. Coinbase now partners with five of the top 20 largest banks worldwide on digital asset projects, according to Armstrong, who maintained his prediction that Bitcoin could reach $1 million by 2030.

Armstrong also emphasized Coinbase’s work on tokenized assets, arguing tokenization could provide investment access to people without brokers. The New York Stock Exchange announced this week it’s building a blockchain-based venue for 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks and ETFs.

"For people who only make their income from labor, they’re often times left out of this wealth creation engine, which is the ability to invest some of their hard earned money in high quality assets, so that’s what we’re trying to do with tokenization of every asset class," Armstrong said.

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