Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: On-chain capital formation remains one of the biggest opportunities in the crypto industry, and the company is working on it
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that on-chain capital formation remains one of the biggest opportunities in the crypto industry, and the company is working on it. This statement was accompanied by a segment from Yahoo Finance's The Daily Wolf interview, without mentioning new product names or launch dates.
He identifies the bottleneck as policy rather than technology. On January 1, 2026, he responded that the company is working on application tokens and on-chain capital formation, but that policy will take time; this is not a technical issue. In the 2026 priorities, he listed global integrated exchanges, stablecoins and payments, as well as moving activities on-chain through the developer platform, Base, and Base applications as three parallel tasks.
The acquired entry point is Echo. Coinbase completed the acquisition on October 20, 2025, for approximately $375 million in cash and stock, with standard price adjustments retained. Echo was founded by Cobie and allows projects to conduct private placements to the community or use Sonar for self-hosted public token sales. The announcement stated that approximately 300 transactions had been completed post-launch, raising over $200 million, with early Sonar cases including Plasma's XPL sale. Echo will maintain its independent brand, with Sonar integrated into the Coinbase interface.
Native financing has already been successfully executed on Base. On September 6, 2026, Armstrong retweeted a record from the head of Base: that week, projects completed on-chain native fundraising on Base, raising over $14 million from thousands of participants, with funds directed towards on-chain reputation and capital formation. His exact words at the time were that capital formation is starting to work on Base, and he has long believed that on-chain can be more efficient.
The secondary market has already expanded ahead of the primary issuance. On August 24, 2026, Coinbase opened tokenized U.S. stocks to qualified users outside the U.S. on Base, with the first batch including Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Alphabet, followed by Tesla, Microsoft, and others. The tokens are issued by Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, with the underlying stocks held in a segregated account at SEC-registered broker Alpaca Securities LLC. On September 25, 2026, Aave V4 on Base accepted AAPLc, AMZNc, GOOGLc, METAc, MSFTc, NVDAc, TSLAc as collateral to borrow USDC, with Chainlink used as the oracle.
Buyers are projects and retail investors looking to bypass traditional private placement lists, while sellers are Coinbase, consolidating issuance, custody, and trading into the same interface. The event was driven by regulatory developments: on September 17, 2026, the SEC granted a five-year conditional exemption, allowing licensed automated market makers to trade tokenized U.S. market system stocks, provided they have equal rights to the underlying securities and comply with OFAC regulations. Benefiting from this are Coinbase, which already has Base, custody, and stablecoins, while under pressure are tokens that only provide offshore economic exposure without full shareholder rights, and traditional underwriters that still rely on roadshows and lock-up periods for allocation of shares.
Armstrong did not announce quotas, rates, or opening days for U.S. users this time. In January, he had already tied the timeline to policy, not to code.
Source: Public information
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Armstrong's trajectory has evolved from fiat deposit exchanges in 2012 to acquiring Echo for approximately $375 million in October 2025. Cobie had previously noted a 95% failure probability at the time of founding, yet ended up selling to Coinbase. During the same period, Coinbase also acquired the token management tool Liquifi, integrating post-issuance lock-up, vesting, and fundraising into the same backend. In July 2026, Cobie transitioned to manage Coinbase's main application, professional trading, and Base applications, with fundraising products being integrated into the trading entry rather than remaining on an independent site.
The path of money has already shown samples. Echo's approximately 300 transactions raised over $200 million, representing community private placements and Sonar public offerings. Base absorbed over $14 million from thousands of addresses in a week in September 2026. Tokenized stocks represent another path: the underlying shares are with Alpaca, tokens are issued by Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, and then used as collateral in Aave V4 to borrow USDC. Issuance, holding, and collateralization have been linked, with stablecoins serving as the settlement currency and Base as the venue.
A comparable scenario is from 2017 when exchanges only listed tokens without hosting issuances, with projects seeking their own market makers and custodians. Robinhood's offshore stock tokens provide economic exposure, while the SEC's exemption this time requires equal rights to the underlying securities, indicating different thresholds. Coinbase is currently in a control phase: secondary tokenized stocks are already open to non-U.S. users, while primary on-chain financing is still hindered by the policies he has named, not by the chain itself.
This represents a shift in pricing power. Traditional underwriting determines who can enter the first round through roadshows and allocation lists. On-chain fundraising replaces lists with wallets and compliance thresholds; if an exchange simultaneously possesses issuance tools, custody, and trading, the price difference expands from listing fees to fundraising, holding, and collateralization. The SEC's five-year exemption has only opened a licensed venue without automatically legalizing U.S. primary issuances. Armstrong states they are working on it; what has been acquired are tools, while what has not been acquired is the U.S. issuance license.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
The trading entry absorbs issuance, and underwriting changes its surname.
Technology can go on-chain, but licensing determines who can sell.
First having custody and stablecoins, fundraising becomes the same business.