Coinbase CEO’s bold Bitcoin prophecy: The road to $1m by 2030

• Introduction of ETFs from heavyweights like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark Invest has propelled cryptocurrencies into the portfolios of everyday investors.

Switching gears from points and perks to digital gold: Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s co-founder and CEO, is no stranger to headline-making statements.

When Armstrong started Coinbase back in 2012, crypto was mainly a plaything for tech geeks. He literally launched from a rented apartment—talk about humble beginnings! Flash forward to today: Coinbase is not just a household name, but a public company, serving over 100 million users globally.

Armstrong, now 41, has watched Bitcoin evolve from digital oddity to a core asset that shapes entire markets.

Now the world wanted to know where things were headed next. Armstrong—now 41 and still as quietly intense as ever—decided to lay his boldest card on the table.

“The rough idea I have in my head is we’ll see a million-dollar Bitcoin by 2030,” he declared, eyes sparkling behind his glasses. Sure, there were uncertainties, he admitted—”high error bars around these He mused how, not long ago, the thought of US government officials openly holding Bitcoin would have sounded absurd.

“That would’ve been kind of like vision board stuff, and someone would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy. The US government’s not going to officially hold Bitcoin.’ But they do now — there’s an executive order for it.”

Regulatory obstacles

For Armstrong, the landscape was changing faster than anyone could have predicted. Regulatory obstacles—historically the bane of the crypto world—were starting to crumble. He pointed to major milestones: the GENIUS Act, which carves out rules for stablecoins, and a crucial market structure bill winding its way through the Senate.

“We’re starting to see regulatory clarity emerge in the United States, which I think is a bellwether for the rest of the G20,” Armstrong explained, fingers crossed that something significant could happen before the end of the year.

Quantum computing

Armstrong’s optimism wasn’t just directed at governments. He rattled off anecdotes about giant institutions, from hedge funds to international banks, which dipped their toes into Bitcoin while waiting for clear signals from regulators.

“These big institutions I talk to, they’re holding one per cent of the portfolio in Bitcoin. And I’m like, ‘What would it take to move it to 2, 5, even 10 per cent?’ And they say, ‘Regulatory clarity.’ That’s it.”

He smiled, thinking of how the industry had matured. The introduction of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from heavyweights like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark Invest had propelled cryptocurrencies into the portfolios of everyday investors.

“The ETFs have been huge,” he admitted. There was an undeniable shift: digital assets were no longer alien territory, but fast becoming a staple in sophisticated investment strategies.

As for technical threats, Armstrong was characteristically pragmatic. The era of hacks and fatal flaws wasn’t over, but the most chilling risks—protocol failures, hostile legislation, institutional skittishness—were fading. The next challenge on his radar was quantum computing, and he felt confident that the crypto community was moving swiftly.

“We need to make sure we upgrade it to a post-quantum cryptography,” he said. “Are elliptic curves already post-quantum or no? They are theoretically. I believe there is a path… Bitcoin core, Ethereum, Solana—everyone’s looking at proposals now.”

In Armstrong’s mind, the future was less about wild speculation and more about a deliberate, communal stride towards legitimacy. “I don’t see the regulatory thing going away. That was one of the big risks—is the government going to shut this down? I think that risk has been severely diminished.”