Brian Armstrong Says WSJ Will Blame Coinbase for CLARITY's Collapse

Key Takeaways

• Brian Armstrong said on Sept. 19 the WSJ is preparing a story blaming Coinbase for the CLARITY Act’s defeat.
• The bill failed a Senate cloture vote on Sept. 15, and bitcoin ETFs shed $450 million the same day.
• Armstrong says the SEC and CFTC can now set crypto rules under existing authority, without Congress.

A Pre-Emptive Strike

Armstrong did not wait for the alleged article to come out; instead, he took to X and aired his thoughts, stating:

“Here we go again!. The WSJ is working on a story blaming Coinbase and me personally for the CLARITY Act not passing.”

He then went a step further, accusing the paper of “regurgitating bank lobby talking points” and claiming the Journal “takes direction from bank lobbyists instead of reporting the truth.”

As of Saturday, the outlet had not published the story Armstrong described, so its actual argument is still unknown. What is known is the record the paper would be drawing on, and Armstrong laid out his version of it in what he called “the boring TLDR.”

What Happened in January?

The case against Armstrong starts on Jan. 14, when on the eve of a scheduled Senate Banking Committee markup, he announced that Coinbase could not support the draft bill, writing that “no bill is better than a bad bill.” The committee postponed the session almost immediately, and the markup was not rescheduled for months.