Crypto blew its big moment—and the blame game has begun | Business News

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks was wrapping up her holiday break this January when she noticed a message on her phone. It was a voicemail from Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong, and it was about three minutes long.

The Maryland Democrat was a key negotiator over a landmark bill meant to usher digital assets into wider use. The two had been talking for months. When conversations with Alsobrooks and other lawmakers grew tense, the CEO could speak in a tone that some people working on the bill felt was inappropriate when talking to U.S. senators.

Armstrong, crypto’s highest-profile advocate on the Hill, admonished the senator for changes she was pushing that could have hit the brakes on Coinbase’s ability to pay interest-like rewards on digital tokens. Banks, fearing it would lure away customer deposits, were fighting furiously to ban the practice.

His message to the senator in the voicemail, according to people familiar with it: If you give banks an inch, they’ll take a mile.

Less than two weeks later, the Coinbase CEO shocked his own industry by pulling his support for an early version of the bill just as it was poised to advance. “We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” he posted on X before a key Senate vote on Jan. 15.