Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Backs in Memecoins After Tumultuous Week

It’s been a tough few weeks for memecoins.

The furor over TRUMP and MELANIA coin is yet to die down, and the pump-and-dump scheme from Argentine President with his Libra coin further battered relationships between investor and industry.

But with memecoins under fire, Coinbase CEO and crypto figurehead Brian Armstrong has stepped in to defend the sector.

Related: Price Suppression Fears Grow for Bitcoin as Altcoins, Memecoins Correct Sharply

Armstrong Emphasises Coinbase’s Free Market Approach

Brian Armstrong took to Twitter / X to add his two cents to the current discourse surrounding memecoins. On the back of market despondency over scams and bad actors, memecoins have left many with a bad taste in the mouth. 

But Armstrong believes they are an integral part of the crypto sphere’s culture, and represent the broader, hyper-connected society we live in today.

Just like the early days of the internet with animated gifs, new technologies often look like a toy but evolve into something much more powerful over time. So we should be open minded about where memecoins are going, even if some are silly, offensive, or even fraudulent today.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Most of all, he argues that Coinbase as a company believes in customer freedom – if they want something, and it isn’t illegal, they can have it.

From first-principles, we believe in free market capitalism. If our customers want it, and it’s legal, we aim to let them make that choice for themselves…If a token is a scam or fraudulent, we’d want to remove it. But if it’s just low quality, the customer should be able to…make their own choice.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Armstrong Compares Bitcoin and the USD to Memecoins

The Twitter / X post even goes as far as to claim ‘Bitcoin is somewhat of a memecoin’, before doubling down and suggesting one could argue so too is the US Dollar.

In general, Armstrong believes that memecoins have a huge role to play in the evolution of digital assets, even if they are a bit of a…well…meme for now.

Memecoins are a canary in the coal mine that everything will be tokenized and brought onchain (every post, image, video, song, asset class, user identity, vote, artwork, stablecoin, contract etc).

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Ultimately, to foster a thriving Web3 space, Armstrong calls for bad actors to be purged and to ‘lift up the people trying to build lasting value’. 

This will no doubt go a long way to legitimising the blockchain world, but in particular, the memecoin industry. So, love them or hate them, memecoins are probably here to stay.