Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says that memecoins are the canary in the coal mine, foreshadowing a broader trend of the tokenization of culture.
In a new interview with CNBC, Armstrong says he expects memecoins to eventually lead to the tokenization of identities, votes and art.
“Memecoins in the broadest sense, I think we should find a way for artists to get paid. Anyone should be able to put artwork and get paid for it. I do think memecoins are a canary in the coal mine, that more and more of the world is going to get tokenized and put on-chain.
Every asset class, every vote, every identity, every song, every Instagram post, whatever – in the future I think more and more of these things are going to tokenized. Now, we also need to make sure people are following the law and not doing pump-and-dump schemes or insider trading, and there probably has been a little bit of that in the memecoin space which is not helping anybody.
In every crypto cycle, there seems to be people who rush in and they forget these lessons of the past, but insider trading should obviously be prosecuted and people should avoid doing that unless they want to go to prison.”
However, Armstrong admits that recent controversies surrounding memecoins – including Argentinian President Javier Milei’s LIBRA promotion – haven’t been a great look for the industry. But, he says that there is still a positive underlying path forward for digital assets.
“I do think we’re in the early stages of this industry so it’s the Wild West a little bit with memecoins right now. There’s good that comes with that which is a lot of innovation is happening.
There’s some bad happening as well from what I understand, it sounds like President Milei accidentally shared that information without actually understanding exactly what he was sharing if you believe his comments.
My hope is that this gets cleaned up and people continue to think long-term about how are we going to create real value for the billions of people in the world who need an updated financial system.”
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