Last December, Live Bitcoin News reported that Coinbase – one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States – had decided to go public. On Thursday, the documents tied to the filing were revealed and made available to interested readers.
Coinbase Is Going Public, and Brian Armstrong Has a Lot to Say
Among these documents was a heartfelt letter written and filed by the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong. In the letter, Armstrong describes the cryptocurrency space as something that could ultimately outdo the world of traditional finance and even knock it aside at some point. He says that the space has become wrought with high fees, unequal access and delays, and that there are several “barriers to innovation.”
He further writes that the initial goals of the crypto space are still a long way off, and that the exchange is looking to do all it can to give traders full control over their financial futures. The letter states:
Coinbase is a company with an ambitious vision: to create more economic freedom for every person and business. Everyone deserves access to financial services that can help empower them to create a better life for themselves and their families, but today, we are a long way from this vision.
The letter further explains:
People are using cryptocurrency to earn, spend, save, stake, borrow, lend, vote and perform many other types of economic activity. Coinbase is building the infrastructure to power the crypto economy, helping bring the benefits of this new technology to the world.
Armstrong says that reading the bitcoin whitepaper more than ten years ago was a real gamechanger for him. It led him to a world where virtually everyone could have access to financial services on the cheap. He says that the world of bitcoin and crypto intrigued him because it could make payments faster, and bring businesses separated by geography closer together.
His letter says:
Economic freedom is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for human progress. Societies with greater economic freedom have higher life expectancy and GDP growth, less war and corruption, better treatment of the environment, and higher income of the poorest ten percent of people in society. Higher economic freedom correlates with the kind of societies that we all aspire to create. Our job at Coinbase is to help make this future a reality.
He further comments that the creation of bitcoin has led to an entirely new financial world of digital prospects. He says that nobody could have ever assumed that the establishment of BTC would have ever led to the development of additional assets such as Ethereum, Ripple and the many stable currencies that now fuse standard crypto assets with fiat.
The Economy Is Seriously Changing
He writes:
We’re seeing the digitization of all types of value in a new economy that we call the crypto economy.
