Is Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, “full of shit”?

When the Genius Act was signed off last year by President Trump, I said that it was positioned to keep the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Now, a new debate arises after Jamie Dimon (Chair of JPMorgan) and Brian Armstrong (CEO, Coinbase) had a spat at Davos. Did you hear about it? Probably not, as Davos has far too much noise, but Mr. Dimon said that Mr. Armstrong was “full of shit”.

The argument was all about the CLARITY bill. What is that?

Well, formally known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the bill aims to clarify the whole role and positioning of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, under US regulatory bodies including the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). If you want to know all the details then check this out:

Clarity Act Explained: What It Means For Crypto

The thing is that it has raised an argument between the fintech crypto community and traditional banks, as evidenced by the argument between Dimon and Armstrong. The core argument is that banks believe it will shift investors from traditional financial investments to riskier investments in crypto markets and, in due process, shift customers from the banks to the new players like Coinbase.

Armstrong’s view is that US banks and government are using the Genius and Clarity Act to protect traditional bank revenue streams and constrain innovation, as evidenced by this update from him the other day.

To be specific, Brian believes that the CLARITY Act is worse than having no bill at all, because the bill undermines innovation, weakens competition, and threatens core principles of decentralized finance (DeFi). He specifically criticises provisions that effectively block tokenized equities, new requirements that could expose DeFi users' financial data, and language that shifts power away from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) toward the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Armstrong’s position was attacked by Jamie Dimon at Davos with Mr. Dimon stating that Mr. Armstrong was misrepresenting the banks’ role in opposing parts of a major US crypto market structure bill. The clash centres on stablecoin rewards, with banks opposing yield on stablecoin investements while crypto firms argue bans favour traditional finance.

It’s a bit of a market stand-off between two big players (yes, Coinbase is now a big player).

The result is that CLARITY bill has stalled in the Senate amid growing political and industry resistance. In other words, there is no clarity.

The whole thing is summarised well by Gillian Tett at The Financial Times

The battle between crypto and banks is splitting Trump’s base

She notes that Tether, the world’s biggest stablecoin, made $28.2bn net purchases of US government bonds in 2025 — making it the seventh-biggest offshore buyer and that, if you combined the treasury holdings of Tether and Circle (the second-biggest stablecoin group) it exceeds investors in countries such as China, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

As Tett notes the Genius Act aimed to bring the crypto sector onshore to America as part of mainstream finance, but this banned issuers like Tether from paying interest on stablecoins but it permitted third parties, like Coinbase exchange, to do so.

“That wrinkle leaves banks terrified that they will lose retail deposits to stablecoin products, since the latter pay more interest. Thus they want to stop that by rewriting a new proposed bill, called Clarity.”

The specific thing that Tett notes is that the battle between the big banks and crypto players is creating a chasm in Trump’s administration of the economy. What a surprise.