Coinbase CEO: Bitcoin ‘May Be Key to Extending Western Civilization’

In a series of posts on Twitter, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong argued that by providing an alternative to the reserve currency, Bitcoin “may be the key to extending western civilization.”

Armstrong said that as the country controlling the reserve currency, the U.S. is on the path to inflating the money supply and increasing deficit spending, “until it loses that advantage.”

With the Chinese Yuan and the Euro having “their own issues,” Armstrong suggested that “the assumption is the U.S. can continue to inflate,” but that observers had reckoned without the “alternative” presented by crypto, which presents an “antidote to inflation.”

However, Armstrong diverged from the Bitcoin maximalist thesis, arguing that crypto and the dollar can coexist, and that crypto will serve as “a natural check and balance that will complement the dollar, and be the best defender of long term American interests (and western civilization more broadly).”

One idea I’ve been contemplating is that Bitcoin may be the key to extending western civilization.

The natural trend of whichever country has the reserve currency is to inflate the money supply and increase deficit spending until it loses that advantage. The U.S. is somewhere on…

— Brian Armstrong 🛡️ (@brian_armstrong) December 3, 2023

Similarly, Armstrong said, fiat currency and crypto will “co-exist for a long time,” with dollar-backed stablecoins set to play “a major role in unifying these worlds.”

Armstrong expanded on his thesis in several follow-up comments and replies, noting that Bitcoin would “extend the core tenets of economic freedom” such as property rights and sound money in western civilization.

Responding to a post highlighting the argument that a deflationary currency could hamper economic growth because it would prevent lending, Armstrong responded that it would simply mean “a higher bar for lending to occur,” since lending would only occur where people feel the expected return from a project is better than simply holding the currency.

Future-gazing

Armstrong has been engaging in a number of future-gazing predictions recently. In a recent interview with Decrypt, he suggested that autonomous AI “agents” could transact using crypto in the future, and that crypto could have a role in establishing the provenance of information.

Coinbase CEO: Future AI ‘Agents’ Will Transact in Crypto

In the shorter term, he also flagged up decentralized social media, payments technologies and stablecoins as technologies that could “help push crypto into the next wave of adoption,” alongside DeFi and NFTs.

Armstrong also expressed optimism over the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF, seen as a bellwether for institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency. Enthusiasm over the prospect of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval by the SEC has propelled the cryptocurrency to an 18-month high over $42,000 in recent days.

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