Crypto users will reach 1 billion users within a decade, says Brian Armstrong

Coinbase’s CEO believes the number of people using cryptocurrencies will increase over the coming years.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes that the number of cryptocurrency users will grow five folds over the coming decade. He said this while speaking at the Milken Insitute Global Conference on Monday.

At the moment, there are over 200 million cryptocurrency users globally. Armstrong said he is optimistic the number will grow to a billion over the next decade. He said;

“My guess is that in 10-20 years, we’ll see a substantial portion of GDP happening in the crypto economy.”

Coinbase is currently one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The US-based exchange has a presence in various countries globally and is a publicly-listed company in the United States.

Armstrong touched on some of Coinbase’s developments in recent months. He revealed that the Coinbase NFT platform already has more than 2.5 million users on its waitlist despite the exchange not revealing the exact launch date of the platform. 

Coinbase is also close to acquiring Brazil’s crypto exchange, 2TM and has also agreed to purchase Turkey’s oldest crypto platform, BtcTurk. 

Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood is another popular name to speak at the event. She said she sees a huge potential in the decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem. According to Woods, the financial services offered by DeFi protocols without the stress of going through banks or the traditional financial institutions is alluring. She said;

“In the case of DeFi and next-generation internet, we are seeing a lot of financial companies losing talent to crypto. So they have to take it seriously, or else they are going to be hollowed out.”

The cryptocurrency market has been underperforming in recent months. Since reaching an all-time high of $69k in November, Bitcoin has lost nearly 50% of its value and now trades around $38k per coin.

The total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1.7 trillion, down from the all-time high of $3 trillion recorded in November 2021.