Coinbase co-founder and chief executive Brian Armstrong used the company’s annual State of Crypto Summit on 12 June to advance his most ambitious thesis yet: that Bitcoin could ultimately displace the US dollar as the planet’s reference asset. “Bitcoin could be the reserve currency of the world,” Armstrong wrote on X as he retweeted a clip of his on-stage remarks, amplifying words he had delivered only minutes earlier to several hundred policymakers, investors and developers gathered in Lower Manhattan.
Bitcoin Could Become The World’s Reserve Currency
On stage, Armstrong reminded the audience that money serves as both medium of exchange and store of value, praising dollar-pegged stablecoins for accomplishing the first task “beautifully” while arguing that fiat currencies are failing at the second. “Democracies around the world are really struggling to get their deficit spending under control,” he said, before offering what he called “my crazy little bit-out-there idea.”
If public finances deteriorate further, he continued, “I think Bitcoin is going to provide an important check and balance on deficit spending. And if it gets out of control too much, people will flee to it in times of uncertainty. And it could actually end up that Bitcoin is the new reserve currency of the world.”
Armstrong’s reasoning rests on Bitcoin’s algorithmically fixed 21 million-coin limit, which in his view provides an external brake on governments accustomed to monetising deficits. The subtext was the United States’ debt load, now hovering near $37 trillion, a figure that has swollen by almost $4 trillion in the last eighteen months alone.
Armstrong has been warning for months that such fiscal trajectories, if left unaddressed, could trigger a global flight from sovereign currencies. In January he published a blog post urging Washington to build a “strategic bitcoin reserve,” and in March he joined other industry leaders at a White House for the first crypto round-table.
Armstrong’s forecast landed on fertile ground. Only minutes earlier the summit’s surprise keynote—a prerecorded message from President Donald Trump—had underscored how far Bitcoin has travelled from outsider code to headline macro policy. “My administration is working with Congress to pass the GENIUS Act supporting the creation of dollar-backed stablecoins, and we also will be working to create clear and simple market frameworks that will allow America to dominate the future of crypto and Bitcoin,” Trump declared, calling it “an honor” to be regarded as the first “crypto president.”
The White House has already put hard muscle behind those words. On 6 March Trump signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a US Digital Asset Stockpile, directing the Treasury to consolidate forfeited BTC and buy more coins, subject to budget-neutral conditions. Recently, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets of the White House Bo Hines disclosed that the Trump administration will unveil the architecture of its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve “in short order.”
At press time, BTC traded at $104,876.
