Brian Armstrong

And the banks need competition.

They need to innovate.

We also saw this from some of the securities broker lobbying groups, because tokenized equities are a big thing happening in crypto.

So there was three or four red line issues we saw in the draft text.

And as I was in DC that day meeting with members of the Senate, I asked them, OK, is there a path to fix this after it comes out of committee?

And they basically told me behind closed doors, if this comes out of committee with a bipartisan vote, we can't really help you on the full Senate floor.

And so I felt like I had to stand up and say something defending our customers' rights.

I was careful not to opine on what the Senate should do in terms of a markup or not, and I was careful not to say anything.

We don't represent the whole crypto industry, but from a Coinbase point of view, I was not comfortable with the draft text as written, and I'm glad that everyone came back for another round of negotiation.

Oh, yeah, I mean, this is not our bill.

I actually, I give all the credit really to the Senate, and certainly President Trump has said that this is a core part of his crypto agenda.

So my impression is that the White House is fully leaned in here and wants to get something done, as do we, as do the bank CEOs that I met with today.

So I'm not seeing any real barriers here.

There are some people who are a little grumpy.

I think they got caught off guard that we didn't support the draft as is.

But it's kind of like that metaphor of three blind people looking at an elephant and everyone is trying to figure out... there's probably somebody in the administration who had that point of view, but that's not... the people we're speaking with I don't think have taken that approach.

They actually very much want to get this done.

Yeah, so that's certainly one of the core parts of the debate.

I think that some of the bank CEOs I've spoken with have kind of said, hey, we have this really high regulatory burden with being a bank.

And what you're doing kind of looks like a bank.