Stablecoins Linked to Consumer Price Index Might Be a Thing in the Future, Says Coinbase CEO

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Australia Country Director at Coinbase John O’Loghlen hosted an AMA on Oct. 5, talking about stablecoins, token listings, and more. Armstrong shared his thoughts on stablecoins that are more like “flat coins” that might be linked to CPI or purchasing power of the consumer.

Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong live streamed an AMA on Oct. 5, answering a variety of questions and covering topics such as stablecoins. The AMA largely focused on Coinbase in Australia and also featured Australia Country Director at Coinbase, John O’Loghlen.

Armstrong opened the discussion by saying that Coinbase was focused on expanding internationally, something that has been proven by many past statements by the CEO. Shortly after, the two began taking questions from the audience, one of which related to stablecoins in Australia.

The CEO said that stablecoins were an important milestone and that they should be available in Australia. Of particular interest is the fact that he said there might be more stablecoins like fiat coins and that they move with purchasing power,

“And over time, we may even see stablecoins that are really more like flat coins. They actually try to move with purchasing power, you know, linked to CPI, which is sort of an economics measure that, you know, basically, if you can buy a McDonald’s hamburger today with, with one of these coins, you should be able to buy McDonald’s hamburger, five years from now with one of these coins”

Efforts toward self-managed super funds

One of the more interesting answers was in response to whether the exchange would offer self-managed super funds as well as corporate trustee structures. The officials confirmed that there are efforts underway in this regard. Specifically, Armstrong said that it would offer economic freedom and control,

“We want people to be able to control their own investments and they should be able to invest in crypto to this discussion, important emerging asset class. So we’ve got a couple of efforts underway to try to integrate with some of the biggest super funds out there and make that possible for people to invest directly in crypto and then same thing on the corporate trustees structures.”

He also pointed out that there was similar work done in the United States and referred to a deal with BlackRock. However, he said he could divulge more information.

Coinbase won’t be gatekeeping in regards to listings

The Coinbase executives also said that the exchange did not want to act as gatekeepers but also wanted to follow regional laws and ensure that consumers were protected. The listing process on Coinbase has been the subject of scrutiny, and it’s unsurprising that it would have popped up. They said about this process,

“And so what we’ve tried to do is say we’re going to have listing standards for our centralized exchange where we look really closely at things like cybersecurity risk, make sure these smart contracts. Don’t have some kind of flaw where…customers lose funds. We look at from a compliance point of view, and really diligence the teams behind these points.”

They also said that Coinbase’s policy teams are working on helping create clearer regulation and that there was a 72-point legal analyst for each token. They do note that the idea of tokens being securities or commodities is still an emerging discussion.

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