Brian Armstrong: Coinbase, Cryptocurrency, and Government Regulation | Lex Fridman Podcast #307

The following is a conversation with Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform with 98 million users in 100 countries, listing Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and over 100 popular cryptocurrencies. I recorded this conversation with Brian before this week's SEC probe into whether some of the crypto listings are securities and thus need to be regulated as such. As always, with conversations that involve cryptocurrency, I try to make it timeless so that the price soaring high or crashing down low doesn't distract from the fundamental technological, economic, social, and philosophical ideas underlying this new form of money, energy, and information. Our world runs on money, the exchange and store of value, and cryptocurrency seeks to build the next chapter of how money works and what it can do. Coinbase and Brian are trying to do this by working together with regulators and governments, which is a long and difficult road. Bureaucracies resist change, for better and for worse. The latest SEC probe is a good representation of this. It is a serious attempt to limit fraud, but one that also runs the risk of limiting innovation and limiting financial freedom of individuals. This is a complicated mess, and I applaud everyone involved for trying to work through it. I hope, in the end, the interest of the individual wins. Decentralization, after all, is a hedge against the corrupting nature of centralized power. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Brian Armstrong. Let's start with the fact that you're a programmer. What was the first program you've ever written, or the first one you, that you remember?

The first memory I have of programming was probably in middle school, and I remember it was recess, and they had this, like, this time period where you could read books, and the other kids were, like, reading comic books and stuff. And for some reason, I had gotten into this idea that I wanted to get into computers, and I was playing with computers at home. And so I got this book, I think from the library, and it was called, like, How to Learn Java in 30 Days. So I was-

(laughs)

(laughs) I was reading this book at, like, you know, the recess, and I didn't understand anything, and I remember I went home and I tried to get this thing working. And you know, the f- if you've ever written a Java program, the first lines are like, "Public static void main (String[] args ) " or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

And it's just, like, it's- it's so foreign, and it's so difficult to get started. And so I was kind of frustrated. I was like, "I don't understand anything that's happening in this book." The first- the first thing I wrote was probably just, like, a Hello World app in Java, but it was so... I felt like I was so confused about what was actually happening that I later learned a bit of PHP, and PHP was, like, more fun for me 'cause it was like, "Oh, just print out what you want," you know? It didn't have all this complexity around it. So, then I got more into PHP. I started building, like, some simple websites. I think learned some HTML. So I think that was my introduction to programming, at least the very beginning part.