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Coinbase CEO: Crypto winters are a thing of the past

Brian Armstrong thinks crypto's boom-and-bust cycles are over.

Portrait of Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he doesn't expect another crypto winter.

Photo: Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he doesn’t see the crypto industry going through a prolonged slump, despite recent volatility in cryptocurrency prices and speculation that we're entering another crypto winter.

Armstrong argued that crypto winters are a thing of the past, given the industry’s strong growth and momentum.

“I don't think we're entering the crypto winter,” Armstrong said on Coinbase's fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. “In fact, we don't really think about it like that anymore. Early on in crypto history, there was a trend of going through summers and winters. Crypto is working now. So I don't expect it to be anything quite that pronounced over time.”

Speculation heightened recently that the crypto industry was entering a new down cycle as prices have fallen dramatically since late last year.

Coinbase reported fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations, though the its stock slipped in after-hours trading after the company said it expects lower trading volume in the current quarter.

Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

brian armstrongcoinbasecrypto wintercryptocurrency
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