ADFW

As Co-Founder and CEO of Coinbase 🛡️, Brian Armstrong has long operated at the fault line where regulation meets innovation. And today, he highlighted why that balance matters more than ever. Armstrong noted that well-designed systems should remove the risks that are truly corrosive like fraud, without suffocating the healthy risks that drive discovery. As he put it, a thousand ideas should be allowed to launch, even if most of them never make it. That is the only way you find the exceptional ones. Speaking at #ADFW2025, he recognised Abu Dhabi and the UAE for setting this equilibrium through clear rules, credible oversight, and the freedom for builders to test, iterate and occasionally fail.