Best of x.com/brian_armstrong on Kiwi News
@brian_armstrong on X · Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
14 stories by @brian_armstrong on X have been shared on Kiwi News since 13 August 2023, with 29 upvotes and 10 comments in total. The latest was shared on 12 October 2026. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- @brian_armstrong: Base is building private transactions with Iron Fish team
- Brian Armstrong on memecoins
Brian Armstrong argues that memecoins, though often silly, offensive, or fraudulent today, should be approached with an open mind because new technologies often start as toys before evolving into something more powerful. He says memecoins are a canary in the coal mine signaling that everything will eventually be tokenized and brought onchain. Coinbase's approach is to let customers choose legal tokens for themselves while removing outright scams and providing useful information such as reviews or community notes. Armstrong also states that insider trading in some memecoins is illegal and carries prison time.
- Economic freedom creates prosperity for all
Coinbase's leadership argues that economic freedom drives prosperity and that crypto is the technology that can expand it worldwide. The post credits growing support for free markets in the U.S., Canada, Argentina and elsewhere, and says over three quarters of adults worldwide want more economic freedom, according to the company's survey. It cites stablecoin transaction volume up over 3x year over year to about $27T, and says Georgia is placing land records on the blockchain. The post also urges policymakers to pass onshore crypto laws and establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve.
- @brian_armstrong: Bomb squad called for unmarked package
Brian Armstrong wrote that an unmarked white van delivered a mysterious package to his house while he was out of town. His security team x-rayed it and saw a battery, wires and a cylinder inside, so the bomb squad was called in. Armstrong said the package turned out to be a gift of new tequila from the @theallinpod hosts, and he thanked law enforcement and the besties for it.
- Unleashing onchain interest is a win-win
Crypto industry writing argues that U.S. stablecoin legislation should let holders earn interest on stablecoins, so that banks and crypto companies can both share reserve yield with consumers. The article says stablecoin issuers typically keep interest earned on short-term U.S. Treasuries, and it cites a 2024 average Fed Funds rate of 4.75% against a 0.41% average consumer savings yield. It also notes that stablecoins are already among the largest holders of U.S. Treasuries and argues that current securities laws, which exempt interest-bearing bank accounts, block issuers from paying interest.
- @brian_armstrong: Coinbase cuts 14% of staff, restructures to be AI-native
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced in an internal email that the company is cutting about 14% of its staff and restructuring to become "AI-native." He cites two forces: a down crypto market that requires a leaner cost structure, and AI changing how work gets done, with engineers shipping in days what once took weeks. The restructuring flattens the org to five layers below the CEO/COO, requires leaders to be active individual contributors, and moves toward AI-native pods, including experiments with "one person teams." US employees leaving will receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, plus 2 weeks per year worked, their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA.
- @brian_armstrong: 40% of daily code at Coinbase is AI-generated, targeting >50%
- @brian_armstrong: 7-hour single-song playlist helps me do deep focused work
- @brian_armstrong: Coinbase joins S&P 500, signaling crypto's mainstream arrival
- @brian_armstrong: when you find the way out of the system
- @brian_armstrong: Fine-tuned Qwen3.5-9B beat frontier models on Coinbase fraud
Brian Armstrong reports that Coinbase fine-tuned the open-weight model Qwen3.5-9B on proprietary internal data, and it outperformed frontier models on fraud prevention, at much lower cost and speed. He argues that specialist models will increasingly outperform generalist frontier models on narrow tasks, whether working within teams or on their own. Coinbase is making it easy for employees to fine-tune models internally, including through a skill in its internal harness, and Armstrong suggests some backend services could be replaced entirely by this architecture.
- @brian_armstrong: crypto market structure bill passes Senate Banking Committee
Brian Armstrong reports that the crypto market structure bill has passed the Senate Banking Committee with a bipartisan vote. He calls it a historic day for crypto and says the bill improved from where it stood in January on rewards, tokenization, DeFi, and CFTC authority. Armstrong says he is proud Coinbase stood up for its customers at that time, and he hopes the bill becomes a bipartisan law that cements the US as the world's crypto capital.
- Coinbase cut ties with law firms that hired former SEC enforcers
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the company will stop being a client of any law firm that hires former SEC officials who committed what he calls bad deeds under the prior administration. He names Milbank and Gurbir Grewal, saying Coinbase no longer works with the firm while Grewal is there. Armstrong calls the SEC's pursuit of the crypto industry an ethics violation, and he urges the industry to tell its law firms that hiring these former officials means losing those clients.
- @barmstrong: „Onchainsummer shows how broken wallet UX is“
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the #OnchainSummer campaign is exposing how broken the user experience is in the main Coinbase app for NFTs, dapps and L2s. He says the company needs to treat these as first-class experiences and that employees are now dogfooding these flows so they feel the problems themselves. Armstrong adds that Coinbase Wallet is further ahead but still has a lot of work to do, and says the company will make rapid updates on the biggest pain points over the next two weeks, asking users to send feedback in the replies.