Coinbase CEO Talks About Binance Charges: All You Should Know
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that his company chose the right path to comply with US authorities.
- He said that his exchange chose the expensive and slow approach to compliance, which benefited it in the long term.
- The exchange “got the licenses, hired the compliance and legal teams,” and expanded operations slowly.
- Armstrong’s statement came after Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to the DoJ charges.
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the largest digital asset trading platform in the United States, Coinbase, shared his two cents on the recent settlement between the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, Binance. As per Armstrong, his company made the right decision to comply with the US money transmitter licensing laws.
In a post on social media platform X (previously known as Twitter), Armstrong said that since the foundation of Coinbase in 2012, he knew that his company would have to “embrace compliance to become a generational company that stood the test of time.” The executive noted that his exchange “got the licenses, hired the compliance and legal teams, and made it clear our brand was about trust with our customers and following the rules.”
Armstrong said that his company gave its all to raise the bar of trust and increase transparency so that it could finally go for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2021. He said that Coinbase took its time with expansion, taking a more difficult and expensive path to compliance, but gained significant benefit from this method.
“You can’t launch every product that customers want when it’s illegal,” said the Coinbase executive, possibly hinting at the derivatives trading and staking services offered by Binance without registering these services with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Armstrong said that Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ in the crypto space, pleading guilty shows that the decision taken by Coinbase to follow the “hard way was the right decision,” while adding:
“We now have an opportunity to start a new chapter for this industry. We took a lot of arrows operating here in the US due to the lack of regulatory clarity, and my hope is that today’s news serves as a catalyst to finally achieve that. Americans should not have to go to offshore, unregulated exchanges to benefit from this technology. This industry should be built right here in America, in a compliant way, under US law,” said the executive.
Interestingly, members of the digital asset sector acknowledged the fact that Coinbase is now the most powerful exchange in the US after Binance.US was chased out by the authorities. Additionally, the leading exchange has also been named as the custodian for the Bitcoin spot ETF by BlackRock, officially named the iShares Bitcoin Trust.
As reported earlier by BitcoinWisdom, Coinbase debuted a new regulated crypto futures service for customers based in the US.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
