Brian Armstrong, Coinbase co-founder, revealed his view on the future of bitcoin at the TechCrunch Disrupt Europe conference in the UK.
CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, spoke at the TechCrunch Disrupt Europe conference, held in the UK, where he discussed the future of bitcoin. He spoke on various issues, covering the bitcoin
Armstrong called bitcoin “the most exciting technology since the internet” and admitted Coinbase faced an increase in bitcoin transaction volume.
“If you look at the data over the last two years, the number of transactions has continued to grow up. When it comes to the USD volume, bitcoin has gone through three bubble periods,” Armstrong said. But Coinbase also has internal metrics that are deeply related to mainstream bitcoin adoption. “Are deposits growing? Are more people signing up? Are people using bitcoin for commerce? All these numbers are going up month over month,” he said.
Coinbase CEO is sure that despite the recent downturn, there is nothing to be worried about. “We are just seeing a classic hype cycle. The Internet in 2001, the NASDAQ crashed down. In many ways, bitcoin is the most exciting technology since the Internet, we think,” he added.
Exchange and wallet services provider is actively working on promoting bitcoin and take it into the mainstream. The company tries to prompt more merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments. “Overstock was the first billion dollar merchant to accept bitcoin payments, now there are ten of them.”
Coinbase is also aimed at simplifying the process of bitcoin usage. “We want to make Bitcoin easier to use. We tried to just make it super-simple.”
According to the company, its share on the market of online wallets amounts to 24% and is about “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of bitcoin.
Armstrong also covered the topic of recent BitLicense proposal. He said the initiative is not the best option, still, admitted the government wants to protect consumers. “New York wants to continue to be a leader in finance. They want to protect customers, they want to encourage startups to move there,” Armstrong said. “So far, I don’t think they have accomplished that goal. The BitLicense goes a bit further than any other regulation out there. It’s a little unclear at this point, but at Coinbase we reach out proactively to regulators.”
Speaking on bitcoin regulation, he said: “I think it’s going to end up a lot like the Internet. Some countries try to regulate the Internet — bitcoin will be very much like that. It will be legal, and there will be some countries with currency control.”
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