Coinbases Brian Armstrong Looks Back at Cryptocurrencys Progress Over the Past Decade – Crowdfund Insider

Following the celebration of the new year/2020s, Coinbases Co-Founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong, revealed his thoughts about cryptocurrencys progress over the past decade. He observed the following:

Its easy to forget, but throughout much of the decade, it was a frequently debated question about whether Bitcoin would even survive. Maybe a flaw would be found in the protocol, maybe it would be outlawed, or maybe it would all go to zero since it had no intrinsic value (of course, we crypto folks were quick to point out that the dollar isnt backed by anything either). There were over 379 articleswritten, prematurely declaring the end of Bitcoin. Not only did Bitcoin survive, it thrived, becoming thetop performing asset of the decade. The naysayers were proved wrong and we learned an important lesson about human nature: most big breakthroughs are contrarian ideas that people dismiss and ridicule at the start.

When I was thinking about starting Coinbase, a few people told me I was crazy to try creating a custodial crypto wallet and exchange. The best hackers in the world were trying to break into crypto exchanges, and MtGox along with many others had suffered breaches. Through a combination of luck and skill, Coinbase managed to weather the barrage of attacks, and created many novel methods of key storage which improved with every passing year. We made cryptocurrency easier to use in the process and introduced tens of millions of new people to this new technology. This allowed us to build a cash flow positive company with 800 employees, weather the ups and downs of the crypto markets, and continue to invest in new products to help the ecosystem grow.

For a new industry, there was a lot of infighting as protocol changes were debated and new coins were launched (via fork, or entirely new projects). Many groups became radicalized and splintered off into their own echo chamber. I believe what made this more vitriolic than other technology debates Ive seen (emacs vs vim, iOS vs Android, etc) is that once people own a particular coin they have an inherent conflict of interest and emotions take over. We stop trying to seek the truth and start talking our own book. On the plus side, having a number of competing groups drove a lot of innovation vs having a monoculture or a one coin monopoly. The race is still very much on to see which blockchains will reach the next 100M or 1B users, and I would expect cryptocurrency to eventually see some consolidation, following a similar path to other industries.

The industry went through a period of five bubbles, followed each time by a crash (settling at a higher point than the previous low). In other words, the industry kept growing in an upward channel, but it was a very bumpy ride. This meant that a lot of the discussion and media attention was on the price of crypto, and the day trading attracted short term thinking that bordered at times on gambling. At the same time, investors who took a long term approach saw incredible returns.

We saw how much latent demand there was for startups to raise money from unaccredited investors when the Initial Coin Offering boom kicked off. All the previous crowd-funding records were obliterated, and now 8 out of the top 10 largest crowdfunding projects of all time are crypto-related. The ICO trend attracted the ire and attention of the SEC, who slowly but surely started making enforcement actions in the space. A debate raged on about which crypto tokens were securities, and which werent. Organizations like theCryptoRatingCouncil (CRC) came out, with industry participation, to start to provide clarity. Finally, as often happens with startups that raise too much money, it can actually harm the company. Many ICO projects failed to ship real-world products while sitting on huge piles of cash (some of them began to resemble investment firms over time, rather than real product companies).

Perhaps with the exceptions of the protocols themselves, the best business models in the past decade in crypto tended to be exchanges and brokerages who sold shovels during the gold rush to trade this new asset class. Some crypto miners had decent outcomes as well, but the volatility of crypto prices made it very difficult for them to survive the whims of the market. A large number of high quality teams and startups entered the space in the past few years, and there is a lot of venture capital money still flowing into crypto startups (our own small fund, Coinbase Ventures, has invested in 60 crypto startups in the last few years, for instance).

One of the challenges holding crypto adoption back (in addition to scalability and usability) was volatility. While volatility is great for investors/speculators, it isnt great for people who want to use it as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin volatility has trended down over time, which is a promising long term trend, but it seems people want stable cryptocurrencies sooner. Stablecoins saw a lot of adoption in the past few years. In part, this allowed the blockchain not bitcoin mindset that is more common amongst banks and governments, to find an outlet, with everyone from JPMorgan to China announcing efforts to launch stablecoins. It also allowed questionable stablecoins like Tether to provide trading pairs on exchanges without fiat rails, and crypto backed stablecoins like Dai to see increased adoption.

Crypto started the decade with purely retail activity amongst hobbyists and early adopters, but by the end of the decade there was a clear trend of institutions starting to come on board. Not necessarily the large traditional institutions, although they all seem to have teams who are exploring it, but hundreds of smaller crypto forward institutions. A couple hundred crypto funds were created (fun fact: the big three, Paradigm, Polychain, and A16Z Crypto, were all founded by former Coinbase employees or board members).

The decade started off with cryptocurrency being totally unregulated. Coinbase was (as far as I know) the first crypto company to really take regulation seriously because we felt it would increase adoption long term. We started applying for money transmitter licenses in the U.S. starting around 2013. From there, we got an eMoney license in Europe, the Bitlicense in NY, registered as an MSB with FinCEN, and started pursuing additional licenses with other agencies. We have interactions with multiple regulators, all over the world, every week at this point, seeking to be an educational resource. At the close of this decade, I can confidently say that that cryptocurrency is a regulated industry (at least in first world countries), although it will continue to evolve rapidly.

Armstrong went on to conclude his observation with a nod towards Coinbases growth and development over the years:

Overall, being in the crypto industry was a hell of a ride in the past decade. There were a number of ups and downs, and it was a very volatile industry to manage through. Im really proud that Coinbase has stayed financially healthy during this period, growing to more than 800 employees, and has helped build the infrastructure to enable the industry to keep growing. Weve continued to focus on trust and ease of use with all of our products, believing this will help bring in the next 100M and then 1B users to cryptocurrency.

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Coinbases Brian Armstrong Looks Back at Cryptocurrencys Progress Over the Past Decade - Crowdfund Insider