Coinbase CEO Says Being Added to S&P Proves Crypto Is Here to Stay

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Watch Coinbase CEO Says Being Added to S&P Proves Crypto Is Here to Stay - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

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00:00But first, we have to really start with your big moment, which is that S&P 500 inclusion.

00:05You have been focusing here on expanding your world in financial services.

00:11Discover was taken out. You're added in. What does it say about the moment?

00:16Yeah, well, it's a huge moment for crypto to now be in the S&P 500 with Coinbase entering.

00:21And it means that crypto is here to say. People are going to have crypto exposure in all their

00:26401ks. And it points a little bit to, I think, where the future of financial services is going.

00:31Crypto is a technology to update the financial system. We actually launched our own index, Coin50,

00:36which is the top 50 crypto assets, market cap weighted. And someday we hope people might actually

00:41feel the same way about getting the S&P 500 as they do of getting in the Coin50 index. So it's a great moment.

00:47We were talking a little earlier about eToro's IPO. You see other entrants like that come into public markets.

00:52Wondering what it means for you, because eToro is not going to be the only one in terms of entering

00:58that crypto versus stocks world. Do you think Coinbase will ever get into traditional way equity

01:05trading or at least tokenized equity trading in a much larger way?

01:11Yeah, well, we think that all asset classes are being tokenized. Crypto, again, it's this technology

01:16to update the financial system. That means every company, every fintech, every bank, every payment

01:21company, even non-financial service companies are going to be integrating crypto payments. It's

01:25kind of like when the internet came out. And first you had dot com startups and then every company,

01:30every fortune 500 company uses the internet. So we think it's going to be very similar.

01:34And actually, this is a good thing for Coinbase because many of these companies, when they come

01:37into crypto, they're going to buy our products and services. We actually power crypto custody,

01:42trading, payments, especially with stable coins, which is a big new emerging activity for lots of

01:47companies already. And so we're excited about that happening. Now, you specifically asked about

01:52tokenized equities. We're excited about those. And we want to lean into the crypto native solutions,

01:57not trade traditional securities in the way that many other companies do. We think there's unique

02:02advantages to having this come on chain. And so we're excited to explore that. We've met with,

02:06for instance, the SEC task force on this recently. And there seems to be a general willingness

02:11to have these kind of asset classes come on chain now. Let's stay posted on that front. Of course,

02:17there's a big question on how soon that could happen. Now, Brian, stable coins, because part of

02:22the discussion that is looming large in Washington is, of course, that stable coin bill. Now, I recall

02:28a trip I made down to Coinbase's New York offices. I spoke with one of your deputies, Jesse Pollock,

02:32and he showed me the way that people are transacting on Coinbase via stable coin, often at no fee.

02:39I'm really wondering from your perspective, to the extent that when you see a bill passed,

02:44how much that could set off stable coin payments, peer to peer payments in a way that's cheaper

02:50than the financial industry does it today? Yeah, well, you're right. Stable coin adoption,

02:56like for like USDC, it has grown enormously. And a lot of it's happening on base, which is a layer

03:02two solution that Coinbase helped create. So it's a very exciting moment where we're seeing stable

03:07coin adoption. Now, we also need to make sure that this technology gets built here in the U.S.,

03:11and that's what this stable coin bill is really about. It's a historic moment. There's a lot of

03:16interest from senators on both sides of the aisle that I've met with today to get this legislation

03:20done, and that's what we're here to try and help do. Now, the details matter, and there's bits of

03:26language that are being negotiated right up into the last minute, but we're here to try to underscore

03:31the urgency of this, and the 52 million Americans who've used crypto really want to see this

03:35legislation get passed so that this industry can get built here onshore in America. Well,

03:39you say words matter. What are the words now that you would want to see changed as it hits the final

03:43finish line? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple examples for you. One is that, you know, DeFi is something

03:50that is separate from financial services. We don't think it should be included in the AML provisions.

03:54AML provisions make a lot of sense applied to the centralized intermediaries like exchanges

03:59and custodians, things that Coinbase is core business, but DeFi should be excluded from that,

04:05and recent language updates we've seen seem to indicate that that's the path they're going on.

04:09One other area for you to think about is there are some prohibitions on paying interest and yield

04:15in some of the drafts or some of the language that we were made aware of. We think that this is,

04:20you know, banks should have to compete on a level playing field with crypto. We think that paying

04:23interest and yield to customers is good. It's a consumer benefit. We actually think that American

04:27consumers should be able to benefit from that, and any company, whether you're a bank or crypto

04:31company, should be able to compete on that front. Now, there's a lot of debate back and forth about

04:36that, but these are examples of the kinds of issues that are coming down to the line. We want to make

04:40sure that, you know, perfect is not the enemy of good enough, and getting this legislation passed is

04:45the highest priority.

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