Bitcoin helps USD’s reserve status ‘in a strange way’: Coinbase CEO

Bitcoin is helping reinforce the US dollar’s reserve currency status by acting as a market check on excessive inflation and deficit spending, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has claimed Bitcoin provides healthy competition for the US dollar, which in turn pressures policymakers to maintain fiscal discipline and helps preserve the greenback’s dominance.

“[Bitcoin] provides a check and balance on the dollar in the sense of if there's too much deficit spending or inflation in the US, people will flee to Bitcoin in times of uncertainty,” Armstrong argued in an interview on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin on Thursday.

“It might be okay to have 2-3% inflation if the economy is growing at 2-3% but if inflation outstrips the growth of the economy, you'll eventually lose the reserve currency status, and that would be a massive blow to the United States.”

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