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1Bn Crypto Users Forecasted in the Next Decade, Says Coinbase CEO

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase Global Inc, said there would be as many as 1 billion users of cryptocurrencies within the next decade.

Bloomberg reported, citing Armstrong’s remarks during a commentary about price volatility related to the cryptocurrency market at Monday’s Milken Institute Global Conference.

There are currently only about 200 million users of cryptocurrencies in the global market.

During the meeting with Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest, who made a bullish prediction on bitcoin Ryan Armstrong said:

“My guess is that in 10-20 years, we’ll see a substantial portion of GDP happening in the crypto economy,”

DeFi is able to provide almost all financial services, with traditional and central institutions, usually banks, but on the blockchain. Any traditional service provided by a financial institution can be provided through DeFi. In short, Defi is a blockchain-based financial service mirrored by conventional financial services, creating new services or derivatives derived from the unique capabilities of blockchain. Because Defi does not require intermediaries like traditional banks, it can freely trade tokens or borrow tokens.

Meanwhile, Wood believes Bitcoin to be a game-changer by explaining why the cryptocurrency is soaring and gaining traction as a hedge, saying that she considers decentralized finance is great promising, urging the industry to look up to the issue of talent acquisition by adding that:

“In the case of DeFi and next-generation internet, we are seeing a lot of financial companies losing talent to crypto. So they have to take it seriously, or else they are going to be hollowed out.”

As the cryptocurrency market continues to expand, Coinbase has taken steps to expand its footprint to the rest of the world by acquiring and investing in large exchanges elsewhere.

In March, Coinbase reportedly announced plans to acquire a Brazilian holding company called 2TM, the parent company of Mercado Bitcoin – a Bitcoin exchange platform from Brazil – which is regarded as the largest crypto exchange in the Latin American region.

Coinbase Cuts Employees By 18% as Market Outlook Remains Bleak

CEO Brian Armstrong has announced that approximately 18% of all of Coinbase Global Inc’s workforce will be laid off as the cryptocurrency trading platform strategizes to navigate the now evident crypto winter.

While Armstrong cited over-hiring in the wake of the Nasdaq-listed American cryptocurrency trading platform’s expansion in early 2021 as one of the reasons for the explosive growth, it noted that the reality of the economic outlook is not encouraging and the business has to survive in case the recession is drawn out for much longer. Armstrong said the decision to lay off the staff is to cut costs and drive increased efficiency across the board.

“As we operate in this highly uncertain period in the world, we want to ensure we can successfully navigate a prolonged downturn,” Armstrong said in the note shared with all of the company’s staff.

“For the past few months, adding new employees has made us less efficient, not more. We have seen ourselves slow down considerably due to coordination headwinds, and difficulty fully integrating new team members. We believe the targeted resourcing changes we are making today will allow our organization to become more efficient.”

Coinbase Woes is Encompassing

Coinbase stock is currently trading at $51.86, down from over $300 when it made its debut on the Nasdaq back in April 2021. While the hit the company is taking is similar to other tech firms around the world, Coinbase said it needed to be strategic as the downtrend will impact its main revenue source which is high trading volumes.

The hints to cut down on staffing were first given by President Emilie Choi who unveiled plans to stop absorbing new recruits into the Coinbase workforce. Shortly after, CPO, L.J Brock said the offer of employment to newly employed staff will be revoked.

As the final straw which broke the camel’s back is unveiled by Brian Armstrong, it closely modelled the similar move made by Gemini which cut back 10% of its employees earlier this month. However, Coinbase promises optimal compensation and support to all affected staff.

Crypto Winter Beats Top Crypto Billionaires from US Ranking – Forbes

The downturn in the broader digital currency ecosystem has hit some notable billionaires in the US, pulling four names out of the wealthiest American’s list, according to Forbes data.

The media outfit said of the 7 names that made the list of the 400 richest last year with a cumulative net worth of $55.1 billion, only 4 are left, and they all command just $27.3 billion.

With both the prices of digital currencies and the valuation of companies plummeting by a very wide range, the networth of all the billionaires profiled have dropped, even though all still rank as some of America’s richest.

The Crypto Billionaires Who Made the List

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is the richest crypto billionaire in the United States and currently ranks in the 41st position. SBF now boasts of a cumulative networth of $17.2 billion, down from $22.5 billion as of this period last year. Sam is the CEO of FTX Derivatives Exchange and a host of other successful subsidiaries of the trading platform.

The next best-ranked billionaire is Sam’s Co-Founder, Gary Wang, whose networth and ranking are pegged at $4.6 billion and 227, respectively. Wang owned approximately 16% each of both FTX and FTX US.

Ripple Co-Founder, Chris Larsen is the 380th richest American with a total valuation of $2.8 billion (down from $6 billion). Chris’s valuation has been impacted by the price of the XRP coin and the long-protracted lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the status of XRP as a security.

Brain Armstrong, the CEO of Nasdaq-listed trading platform Coinbase Global Inc ranks in the 388th position atop a $2.7 billion (down from $11.5 billion). With the shares of Coinbase plunging remarkably, Brian comes off as the billionaire that has taken the most hit over the past year.

Crypto Billionaires Who Fell by the Wayside

According to the Forbes report, The Winklevoss twin does not make a list this year despite their $2.2 billion networth. As of last year, the Gemini twin was worth $4.3 billion. Jed McCaleb (worth $2.5 billion) and Fred Erhsam (worth $1.1 billion) did not also make the elite list this year.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong To Sell 2% Stake to Fund Science and Tech Development

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Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase Global Inc., has announced plans to sell about 2% of his holdings in the firm over the next year to fund scientific research.

He tweeted the matter on Friday night. Armstrong owns a 16% stake and controls 59.5% of voting rights in Coinbase, according to the company’s 2022 proxy statement. The CEO plans to use capital to fund some scientific research and companies including biotechnology company NewLimit and scientific research firm ResearchHub.

Armstrong informed his Twitter community followers about his decision, which is based on his desire to assist in accelerating science and technology to help solve some of the major challenges in the globe. He, therefore, plans to sell his 2% stake in Coinbase to fund scientific research and companies.

NewLimit deals with researching epigenetic drivers of aging and developing products that can regenerate tissues to treat specific patient populations. On the other hand, Research Hub focuses on accelerating the pace of science by rewarding the open sharing and discussion of academic research.

Besides his intentions to sell some of his holdings to fund science and technology developments, Armstrong reaffirms his bullishness on Coinbase and the crypto landscape, showing his intentions to serve as CEO for the long term.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I intend to be CEO of Coinbase for a very long time and I remain super bullish on crypto and Coinbase. I’m fully dedicated to growing our business and advancing our mission, but I am also excited to contribute in a different way.”

This appears in contrast to the current trends in the industry that has seen several crypto CEOs stepping down from their roles in recent weeks.

Last month, the crypto industry’s epic shakeout that recently caused massive job losses and a series of consolidations reached the corner office. Crypto executives such as Genesis CEO Michael Moro, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell, Alameda Research co-CEO Sam Trabucco, and FTX.US President Brett Harrison stepped down from their positions a few weeks ago.

The departures illustrate an ongoing shift within the beleaguered crypto industry, which is still reeling from the humbling market crash earlier this year. On Friday, shares of Coinbase Global (COIN) fell more than 8%, with the current price trading at $63.59. Recently, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan downgraded Coinbase shares to “sell” due to the continued fall in crypto prices and the ensuing fall in industry activity levels.

Brian Amstrong Sees Bitcoin as a Flight to Safety Asset in 5 -10 Yrs

Besides the positive enthusiasm that has been recorded thus far over the past week, the digital currency ecosystem has lost some of its lusters in the year-to-date period with prices crashing more than 50% across the board.

Despite this gloomy performance from Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto ecosystem, Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong has come to express he believes that investors could come to see the premier cryptocurrency as a major flight to safety asset within the next 5 to 10 years.

Speaking in an episode of Coinbase Exchange Around The Block Podcast, the vocal CEO noted that the market capitalization of Bitcoin is currently not helping it play the role it should be playing as Digital Gold.

With inflation the order of the day around the world, it is expected that assets like Bitcoin will become quite appealing to investors looking to maintain the value of their capital. While Bitcoin played this role very well in the previous fiscal year, it is performing in a rather disappointing way this time around.

Brian Armstrong believes this could change dramatically should the global financial ecosystem now come to reckon more with the nascent asset class with evidence seen in the market capitalization of the assets.

“I think we’ll see that probably change over time. I could see in the next five or ten years as the crypto economy really becomes a bigger percentage of the global GDP that people will actually flee to Bitcoin as the sort of ‘new gold’ if you will, but that hasn’t happened yet,” the billionaire said.

Depending on the current perspective that is being held by different investors, Bitcoin is considered the best digital gold by bulls like Michael Saylor whose company, MicroStrategy Incorporated has stacked more than 120,000 units of the cryptocurrency.

Besides the fear of extreme volatility, more asset managers are now beginning to allocate funds to invest in Bitcoin as soon as the market returns to normal.

Coinbase CEO Criticizes Singapore's Aim to Become a Web3 Hub at Expense of Crypto Trading

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While speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 on November 3, the CEO of U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, raised concerns that Singapore wants to become a forward-looking regulator, but is not welcoming cryptocurrency trading.

Armstrong stated: “Singapore wants to be a Web3 hub, and then simultaneously say: ’Oh, we’re not really going to allow retail trading or self-hosted wallets to be available.” He then said: “Those two things are incompatible in my mind.”

Armstrong further said: “Crypto should not be treated at a disadvantage; they should be treated equally with other financial service regulations.”

Comments by Armstrong came after Coinbase obtained in-principle approval from Singapore Central Bank to offer digital payment token services in the city-state last month.

Meanwhile, Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and Ravi Menon, the Central Bank’s Managing Director who were present at the event responded to Armstrong’s concerns.

Mohanty stated that retail investors today are “exposed to risks they do not understand they are taking.” He said the Singapore central bank believes that Web 3.0 is the future, but wants to ensure that money trading within the ecosystem is a safe currency. Mohanty explained that while the regulator doesn’t worry about internet protocols, it cares about consumers and wants to ensure they are protected.

On the other hand, Mr. Menon responded that MAS “wants to develop the city-state into a ‘crypto hub’ fueled by instant settlements, tokenized assets, and programmable money, not ‘speculating in cryptocurrencies’.”

Menon said Singapore wants to be a crypto asset hub but does not want to be a hub where trading and speculating in cryptocurrencies take place.

Menon further explained that “real value in the crypto industry comes from tokenizing assets and placing them on a distributed ledger for use cases that increase economic efficiency.”

Menon’s comments at the conference came after officials in Hong Kong announced at their own annual gathering, the Hong Kong FinTech Week, a series of policies to re-attract digital asset investment.

The announcement signaled that Hong Kong has joined the race to become Asia’s main financial hub.

On Monday this week, Hong Kong launched an overhaul of crypto regulations that puts it on course to legalize retail trading. The policy even gave firms the chance to start futures-based crypto exchange-traded funds. Officials are also willing to review property rights for tokenized assets and the legality of smart contracts.

No Significant Risk Exposure to FTX or FTT, Says Coinbase CEO

Amid the meltdown of FTX, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted that Coinbase has no significant exposure to FTX and its platform currency FTT, as well as Alameda’s exposure.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the crash of the FTT token on the FTX exchange appears to be the result of high-risk business practices, including conflicts of interest between related entities and misuse of customer funds (lending user assets).

The Coinbase exchange said it would not engage in this type of high-risk activity. Without customer instructions, Coinbase said it never uses customer deposits for other businesses, and users can withdraw assets at any time.

As a publicly listed exchange in the United States, Coinbase’s financial audit is open to all investors and customers. Coinbase has never issued its platform token.

Armstrong emphasized that Coinbase should continue to work with regulators and policymakers around the world in the future to establish reasonable regulations for centralized exchanges or custodians in each market to build trustworthy and reliable products for the industry, but currently, there is not yet a level playing field.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, manages assets through Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm he founded in October 2017.

This summer, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been buying up crypto companies that have been caught up in the credit crunch caused by the sudden collapse of cryptocurrencies Luna and UST or TerraUSD.

However, the leaked balance sheet of Alameda Research shows that the balance sheet of Alameda Research is mainly composed of FTT, a token issued by FTX. However, the liquidity of FTT is not ideal, which has raised investors’ concerns that Alameda may encounter a liquidity crisis.

This news is bound to lead to hyperinflation of the exchange’s native token, FTT. While FTX native token FTT has fallen 71.6%, CoinGecko showed, and the firm’s net crypto asset holdings have plunged 83% in just the past two days.

In the long run, the crypto industry is expected to build a better system using DeFi and self-custody wallets, not relying on third parties. Everything can be publicly audited on-chain.

Analysis suggests the weakness in cryptocurrency exchange FTX this time may provide short-term benefits to other exchanges such as Coinbase. Still, FTX’s liquidity risk has also raised concerns about the overall vulnerability of the industry. Retail investors may consider moving assets to private wallets if the centralized exchange problem persists.

SEC Chair on FTX Collapse: Investors Need Better Protection

The collapse of the beleaguered crypto trading platform, FTX Derivatives Exchange, has pushed top government officials, including Gary Gensler, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to weigh in on the digital currency ecosystem.

Speaking in an interview with CNBC, Gensler said he has reiterated time and again that investors need adequate protection. He bemoaned that despite the clear regulations in the industry, most players are still very much non-compliant with the rules.

“I think that investors need better protection in this space. It’s a field that’s significantly non-compliant, but it’s got regulation,” he said.

For FTX, the SEC boss said that the company has a huge influence in the space in which it has a number of top-profile celebrities, including Kevin O’Leary, Tom Brady, and Steph Curry, as its ambassadors, giving it a massive sway over investors.

In his view, investors and the “public can fall prey to celebrity promotions,” a trait that showed up as very prominent over the past year.

Gensler’s stance that the industry has the laws it needs to guide it is somewhat disputed by top figures in the digital currency ecosystem. In the wake of the FTX implosion, Senator Elizabeth Warren shared a tweet noting she will begin pressing the SEC to intensify its scrutiny of the ecosystem.

In response, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said America does not have the right guiding laws for players in the industry, a move that has pushed more than 95% of trading activities offshore. Drawing comparisons with Singapore, which has defined models for how crypto players should operate, Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse supported Armstrong’s position underscoring the general consensus about the lack of clarity that exists in the industry.

With the fall of FTX, the SEC, Department of Justice, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are all now reportedly investigating trading platforms in the US, beginning with FTX US. This may likely be the norm moving forward.

Coinbase Executives Stand Up for Crypto Staking Services

Trade in cryptocurrencies Executives at Coinbase are defending the company’s cryptocurrency staking services, arguing that they cannot be categorized as a security and threatening to take the subject to court in the United States.

The Chief Executive Officer of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, said on Twitter that the business is prepared to “fight this in court if necessary.” The decision to take this action comes after the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken came to a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 10 to cease providing staking services or programs to customers in the United States.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Kraken did not “register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program,” which the SEC has determined to be a security. Kraken has agreed to pay $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties, in addition to ceasing its services, as part of the settlement.

In a recent blog post, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, expressed his opinion on the matter. He said that “staking is neither a security under the US Securities Act, nor under the Howey test.” Grewal continued by saying, “Trying to superimpose securities law onto a process like staking does not help consumers in any way, and instead imposes unnecessarily aggressive mandates that will prevent US consumers from accessing basic cryptocurrency services and push users to offshore, unregulated platforms.”

Grewal contends that staking does not satisfy the requirements of the Howey test, which need a commitment of money, participation in a common venture, a reasonable expectation of rewards, and the assistance of other people. According to what he stated, “The Howey test originates from a 1946 Supreme Court decision — and there is a different conversation to be conducted about whether or not that test makes sense for current commodities like crypto.”

What the U.S. Congress Decides on Crypto Will Ultimately Overstepping their authority

The policy expert for the cryptocurrency advocacy group Blockchain Association says that despite attempts to police cryptocurrency through enforcement actions, United States financial regulators “are bound by legal reality,” and Congress will ultimately decide what regulations should be put in place for cryptocurrencies.

Jake Chervinsky, the chief policy officer of the organization, contributed his thoughts to a lengthy Twitter conversation on the topic of the current status of crypto policy on February 14.

He made the observation that the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “do not have the ability to completely oversee cryptocurrency.”

Given the ideological divide that exists between the House Republicans and Senate Democrats, Chervinsky is of the opinion that a compromise on the crypto legislation is “unlikely.” He said that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had exceeded their powers in an effort to “get things done” without Congress.

Chervinsky issued a plea for the sector to maintain its composure in the wake of the recent flurry of action from the SEC, which he referred to as “crypto’s biggest opponent.” As an example, Chervinsky cited the SEC’s crackdown on staking services.

The settlement that the SEC reached with the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken on February 9, which forbade Kraken from ever selling staking services to consumers in the United States, has been publicly criticized by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce.

Peirce expressed his disagreement with the majority opinion in a statement dated February 9, in which he said that regulating a growing business via enforcement “is neither an effective or equitable manner of governing” the industry.

It was proposed by Chervinsky that litigation is one method the cryptocurrency business may press for appropriate legislation. Chervinsky said that the court plays a key role in influencing policy that has been “ignored.”

Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, is also the subject of an SEC investigation that is similar to the one that led to Kraken’s settlement.

A more stronger position has been adopted by Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong, who believes that it would be disastrous for the United States to do away with staking for cryptocurrencies.

In a tweet dated February 12, Armstrong contended that Coinbase’s staking services are not securities and said that he would “gladly defend this in court if it were necessary.”

The decisions that judges make in important cases establish new standards in the law. If such a case were to be taken before a court and the judge concluded that Coinbase’s staking services did not qualify as securities, then other cryptocurrency businesses who are in a situation comparable to Coinbase’s may utilize the precedent as part of their defense.