Coinbase CEO Calls for Federal Governance Experiment, Piloting Deregulatory Reforms Through Innovation Sandboxes

October 9: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a post calling for more small-scale governance experiments at the federal level, or the establishment of innovation sandboxes. He believes that putting every reform up for nationwide debate unnecessarily increases the cost of learning and trial and error, and slows down the process.

Armstrong said: "Competition is the best consumer protection mechanism in history, and the government is the only sector structurally exempt from competition." He suggested piloting faster permit approvals, deregulation, or different rules in specific areas, such as 10 square miles of federal land, then measuring the results and gradually scaling up successful approaches.