Since co-founding Coinbase in 2012, Brian Armstrong has adhered to a strategy of "expanding while complying"—the company was one of the first crypto exchanges in the U.S. to complete compliance transformation and went public via direct listing on NASDAQ in 2021. Since then, it has actively shaped a favorable regulatory environment through lobbying, litigation (such as previously suing the SEC for clear regulatory rules), rather than passively waiting for rules to be established.

From a resource allocation perspective, Armstrong's statement aligns closely with Shirzad's previous position, reflecting that Coinbase is reallocating some resources originally dedicated to congressional lobbying towards communication channels with the SEC and CFTC for administrative rule-making; at the same time, his assertion that "previous concessions may no longer need to be insisted upon" indicates that the company no longer needs to continuously concede negotiation chips to maintain congressional support for a specific version of the bill, but can instead reinvest this political capital into negotiations for more favorable rule details.

Similar cases of "leading companies reclaiming previous concessions and betting on administrative rule paths due to the breakdown of original legislative negotiations" have historically occurred after multiple failures of net neutrality legislation, where telecom and internet companies also adjusted their strategies—amid ongoing congressional gridlock, industry giants often bypass legislative bodies and engage directly with administrative agencies like the FCC to seek more favorable rule details. The current stage of the crypto industry marks a critical turning point from "exchanging legislative certainty for industry concessions" to "focusing on existing regulatory authority as the main battleground, and reclaiming negotiation space."

This essentially represents a redistribution of negotiation chips following a shift in the "regulatory change" path: the failure of legislation eliminates the previous time pressure of "needing to pass a specific version of a bill quickly," which was one of the core reasons the industry was willing to concede; once this pressure disappears, the industry is naturally inclined to reclaim previous compromises made to secure the passage of the bill in negotiations with regulators or future Congress. Mechanically, the relatively lenient reward mechanism established by the GENIUS Act also provides the industry with a reference "baseline" precedent—Armstrong judges that there is no need for the industry to maintain stricter self-restraint clauses than the GENIUS Act in the related negotiations of the CLARITY Act.

ABAB News · Cognitive Law

Negotiation chips are only valuable while pressure remains
Once a bill fails, concessions also become void
Established precedents become the baseline for the next round of negotiations