BlackRock’s Fink and Coinbase’s Armstrong Signal a New Era as Global Banks Pilot Crypto

The world’s best banks are leaning into digital assets, according to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, “and the ones that are fighting it are going to get left behind”.

He revealed that a number of large banks were working with the exchange to embrace blockchain innovation through pilot projects.

For many of the largest banks now, we’re actually powering pilots with them doing stablecoins and custody and trading and these kinds of things.

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO

Armstrong’s comments were made at the New York Times DealBook Summit 2025 held on December 3, in conversation with DealBook Founder Andrew Ross Sorkin and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. 

Armstrong said there was still division within TradFi, with many institutions’ lobbying teams actively fighting against digital assets even as their innovation arms were embracing it. 

This is the classic innovator’s dilemma, right? Anytime you have a new technology come around, that everybody who’s an incumbent has to decide — do we want to embrace it or do we want to fight against it?

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO

Related: ECB Warns Stablecoin Run Could Ignite ‘Fire Sale’ Shock in US Treasury Markets

In response to a question from Sorkin about banks fearing a “flight of capital” out of banks to support stablecoins, the Coinbase CEO said it was more about banks being interested in protecting their profit margins.

“I mean, they should have to pay rewards and higher rates to their own customers, and I think they’re trying to put their thumb on the scale — regulatory capture essentially — to prevent crypto from doing that.”

“My guess is that in a year or two, they’ll come back and say ‘ actually we want to be able to pay interest and yield on stablecoins in our own companies’.”

Armstrong said the tide was turning, with banks increasingly adopting stablecoins. 

Related: Ten Major EU Banks Unite to Launch Euro Stablecoin by Late 2026

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink supported Armstrong’s comments, noting that the U.S. was late to the stablecoin party — with India and Brazil leading the way currently. 

“We are now starting to see in Brazil, and in India, whole transformation of a digital economy. They’ve digitised their currency. You even have now credit card purchases on the pipe, in Brazil itself, the Pix,” Fink said. (Pix is a Brazilian instant payment network that supports crypto payment integrations).

What I am worried about, we’re not moving fast enough.

Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO

Crypto Legislation Supports Crypto Acceleration

Institutional interest in digital assets seems to have been supported by a more crypto-friendly political landscape in Donald Trump’s second term. Armstrong praised the passing of the Genius Act in July 2025, which provided a regulatory framework for the stablecoin market. 

We’ll look back on this as the year that crypto regulation went from kind of grey market to well-lit establishment.

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO

But Armstrong said more work was needed to get “clear rules on the books” in the US, to help mitigate crypto market volatility and impacts from high-risk offshore activity. He said the hoped-for passing of the CLARITY Act would help solidify the regulatory foundation.

Armstrong said it was currently “a golden age for freedom” with democratisation of access to digital assets, prediction markets flourishing, and regulation progressing.

“We have regulatory clarity now for stablecoins. We’re seeing it emerging hopefully for market structure. And the US feels like it’s back on offence,” he said.

We have a chance to go update the financial system with crypto and just get a lot of the friction out of the economy.

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO