In 2016, Brian Armstrong laid out a super secret master plan to change the financial world.

Seven years later, he is on track to achieve that plan and onboard one billion people to crypto.

Let's break down exactly how @coinbase is doing it 🧵

Coinbase was founded by @brian_armstrong in May 2012.

Today, Coinbase is the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and second most popular exchange in the world only behind Binance.

But this success was no accident.

@brian_armstrong In 2016, Brian posted a blog post titled "The Coinbase Secret Master Plan".

This post laid out exactly how Coinbase would onboard one billion people to crypto.

The plan was broken down into four major phases:

🔹Phase One: Develop the protocol (1M people)

In this phase, new protocols (BTC, ETH, etc) were invented and people began to tinker with them.

Coinbase worked with open source communities and contributed financially in some cases, but didn't play a major role in this phase.

🔹Phase Two: Build a digital currency exchange (10M people)

In this phase, Coinbase and Coinbase pro were built for consumers, institutions and pro traders.

This continues to be the core business.

This revenue will be used to invest in the later phases and to expand markets.

🔹Phase Three: Build a mass market interface for digital currency apps (100M people)

This is where things get big.

Consumers and businesses need an easy interface to start using digital currency and its apps.

🔹Phase Three

To reach this base, Coinbase built products like Coinbase Wallet and invested in teams working to dramatically lower the hurdle for new apps to be developed and used by ordinary people.

🔹Phase Four: Build the apps of an open financial system (1B people)

With 110 million verified users, Coinbase has its eyes set on phase four.

Coinbase will participate in this area by buying, building, or investing in various companies.

🔹Phase Four

Their first attempt at this was by launching BASE, a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly Ethereum L2.

Build on the Optimism OP stack, BASE aims to become an open ecosystem where anyone, anywhere, can build dapps that reach the next 1B+ users.

🔹Phase Four

But this is just the beginning.

Some examples of what else Coinbase as in mind for phase four include:

→ Loans
→ Investing
→ Remittance
→Venture Capital
→Merchant Processing
→ Identity & Reputation

In a time when CEXs are blowing up left and right, Coinbase is taking a unique approach to creating an open financial system for the world.

The move into Phase Four and launch of BASE represents where Coinbase and the digital currency industry is headed.

What do you think Coinbase will launch next?

Reply to the first tweet with your guess and follow me @jacobavan_ for more threads like this one.