Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the crypto industry stands to gain regulatory clarity no matter the outcome of the Senate's Sept. 15 vote on the Clarity Act.
"If it passes, great, we've got legislation," Armstrong said in a CNBC interview Wednesday. "Frankly, if it doesn't pass, it's also going to be a good outcome because the SEC and the CFTC have said that they're ready to publish rulemaking, and we're going to get regulatory clarity one way or another on the 15th or the day or two after."
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is a major U.S. bill to end regulatory confusion by officially dividing crypto oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission (for tokens that are securities) and the CFTC (for decentralized commodities like bitcoin). It aims to create a formal federal rulebook for crypto exchanges, brokers, and stablecoins, providing a clear legal framework, which, as per industry insiders, is likely to accelerate institutional adoption of digital assets.
Armstrong said the bill carries broad support heading into the vote.
"There's been a lot of good bipartisan compromise, hundreds of pages of input from both sides," he said, adding that law enforcement groups, banks and crypto companies are behind it. He said the "must-have issues" Coinbase had previously raised "have now been resolved."
One unresolved piece is the bill's ethics provisions for elected officials holding digital assets. Asked whether the legislation adequately addresses conflicts of interest, Armstrong said "the details are still being worked out and negotiated."
He said the White House has "already put out an offer on the table that has a very strong ethics provision," while Democrats "have requested something a little bit beyond that, which would include divestiture."
He added the two sides "appear to be very close to a solution."
Armstrong responded to criticism from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has accused Coinbase of using the bill's stablecoin provisions for regulatory arbitrage against banks.
Without naming Dimon, Armstrong said critics with large payments businesses face a "competitive issue" and are "talking their own book." He said Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon and Fidelity have backed the bill.
Armstrong also pointed to agentic finance as an emerging growth area, calling it "still early, but that's the big TAM that's on the horizon."
He noted Coinbase-built infrastructure handles most agentic payments to date.
"Well over 90% of the agentic payments that have happened, you know, so far about 165 million of them, they've over 90% have happened on base, the blockchain we created with x402, the protocol we created, and with USDC," he said. "I think it's fair to say at this point we have a leading position in agentic finance."
Meanwhile, Armstrong reiterated his long-term bitcoin outlook, telling CNBC that $400,000 by 2030 is "a reasonable target," and that "the bottom is in on Bitcoin in this most recent cycle."