Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has outlined an ambitious plan to bring every stage of a startup's journey, from inception to fundraising to public trading, onto the blockchain.
On the TBPN podcast, Armstrong described his vision of an on-chain lifecycle where founders could launch their startups, raise seed rounds, receive immediate capital in USDC (USDC), and ultimately go public via tokenized equity.
“You can imagine this whole life cycle happening on the chain,” he said, adding that such a shift “could increase the variety of corporations raising capital and getting began on the market on the earth.”
Armstrong said startups not need banks or lawyers to process global transfers as funding might be raised immediately through on-chain smart contracts. Once capital arrives, founders can begin generating revenue, accepting crypto payments, accessing funding, and even taking their corporations public directly on-chain.
Bring fundraising on-chain
Coinbase’s CEO noted that the fundraising process is currently “quite arduous.” He proposed an on-chain fundraising effort to make capital formation “more efficient, fair and transparent,” leveraging Coinbase’s recent acquisition of fundraising platform Echo.
Echo, now a part of Coinbase, has already helped greater than 200 projects raise over $200 million. Armstrong said the corporate will initially operate independently but will regularly integrate into Coinbase's ecosystem, giving founders access to its half a trillion dollars in assets under custody and a world investor base.
“If we are able to attract great developers who can raise money and connect them with investors who’ve the cash, we’re the right platform to speed up this,” he said.
Coinbase shares ended Friday up around 10%. Source: Google Finance
Coinbase can also be working with US regulators to enable broader access to on-chain fundraising. Armstrong claimed that current accredited investor rules exclude many individuals from early-stage opportunities.
“In some ways the principles for accredited investors are sort of unfair,” he said. “We hope to search out the correct balance between consumer protection and making these products available to retailers.”
JPMorgan sees potential of $34 billion in Coinbase
Last week, JPMorgan Chase upgraded Coinbase to Overweight, citing the strong growth potential of its base network and revamped USDC reward strategy.
Analysts said Coinbase is “leaning” on its Base Layer 2 blockchain to extract more value from expanding the platform. They estimated that a possible launch of the Base token could create a market opportunity of $12 billion to $34 billion, with Coinbase's share price between $4 billion and $12 billion.
