Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: The Old System Took Shape in the 1970s, Needs the Clarity Act

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong summarized crypto assets as faster, cheaper, and more efficient financial services, stating that the old system took shape around the 1970s, with parts still running on outdated mainframes, making weekend transfers and low-cost wire transfers impossible. He emphasized the need for the Clarity Act to allow the U.S. to lead with clear rules rather than letting the old system and uncertainty prevail.

In the same week, he mentioned on a podcast that the White House has convened industry and regulators to discuss the bill, expecting a Senate vote on September 15. The House passed H.R.3633 on July 2025 with a vote of 294 to 134, and the Senate Banking Committee released it in May 2026 with a vote of 15 to 9, subsequently moving it to the legislative calendar. The House did not complete the vote before the summer recess, and the majority leader arranged for a procedural vote after reconvening. Armstrong also wrote that they need to secure over 60 votes by September 15, or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission will use existing authority to set rules the next day; he prefers a written law to avoid reinterpretation by the next administration. The bill aims to delineate the regulatory boundaries between securities and commodities digital assets. He referred to Bitcoin as digital gold and described stablecoins, payments, lending, prediction markets, and tokenized stocks as on-chain expansions; he noted that Coinbase's spot Bitcoin trading accounts for about 12% of revenue, with the rest coming from derivatives, prediction markets, stablecoin payments, and tokenization. Among the G20 economies, countries like the UK already have trading frameworks, while he described the U.S. as an exception in the largest financial market.

The Clarity Act is still a bill, not law. He described the banking provisions as granting banks about 13 new business permissions in exchange for support from traditional financial institutions. Stablecoin revenues, ethical provisions, and Trump-related assets had previously stalled Democratic votes. The probability of passing the prediction market bill dropped from a high at the beginning of the year to about 30% before bouncing back after the White House meeting.

In market mechanisms, this is a lobbying window pricing, not an on-chain settlement upgrade. Buyers are exchanges and tokenization platforms seeking federal licenses and listing paths, while sellers are Congress's agenda and the 60-vote threshold. Funds do not flow into the mainnet because of a single post but rather into Washington and the implied volatility of COIN valuation regarding "September 15." Beneficiaries are licensed exchanges that have prepared product lines according to future written laws, while those under pressure are platforms that rely on regulatory vacuums for products and the wire transfer networks still using weekday batch settlements. Weekend settlements are a selling point for stablecoins, and whether the bill passes will determine if this selling point can become the default option for U.S. retail.

In supplementary remarks, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission stated that if Congress continues to delay, they will use existing authority to establish leverage and margin trading systems, which adds pressure to Armstrong's "two paths."

Source: Public Information