"There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world who have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a business, so this kind of technology has enormous potential to improve the world over time, even if it is still early days."

- Brian Armstrong, 2 weeks ago

Seems to me that's not at all a hard right-libertarian stance.

That the world is full of underserved people who should be helped by...this for-profit corporation?

You're projecting an exclusiveness that is just not there in the quote. Nowhere does it argue that this corporation should be the only one helping.

If anything, "this kind of technology" means the opposite of exclusivity, namely that Coinbase is part of a larger system than themselves, made of multiple corporations and other entities, and the people themselves, using this kind of technology, which it is claimed together help the underserved.

Or are you trying to argue that this for-profit corporation, or all for-profit corporations, should not be aiming to help underserved people?

Nope just that there’s nothing at all incongruous with that quote identifying an underserved market and libertarian politics.

Good reminder that non-profits, rather than, say, pharmaceutical companies, auto manufacturers, agro-chemical companies, logistics companies, etc. etc. have been the source of the leaps and bounds improvement in human welfare over the past two centuries.

There's nothing about this statement that's incompatible with right libertarianism. Right libertarians themselves do believe that their ideas would improve the world over time, as do adherents of most political ideologies in general.

With cryptocurrencies specifically, the premise is that most poor people are poor because of government over-regulation (which is also deemed responsible for monopolies) and over-taxation, and so providing the ability to circumvent both is beneficial. It's definitely a libertarian stance, although it could be either left or right libertarian by itself. But given that most cryptocurrency adepts also have a problem with fiat money, and generally try to implement an intrinsically limited money supply, it ends up aligning more with right libertarian economic prescriptions.

> But given that most cryptocurrency adepts also have a problem with fiat money, and generally try to implement an intrinsically limited money supply, it ends up aligning more with right libertarian economic prescriptions.

Perhaps so.

But this isn't about cryptocurrency adepts in general. Is there other context that shows Coinbase and/or Brian Armstrong have a problem with fiat money, and/or that they advocate for a limited money supply, or even that they advocate to reduce or avoid taxation?

Seems to me the corporation's activity is literally integrating fiat systems with cryptocurrency, including tax reporting, so it's not clear if Coinbase's longer term direction is towards cryptocurrency being its own separate system of ordinary transactions in the end, or towards it being just another option alongside and integrated with fiat for more options in ordinary life. Regardless of what cryptocurrency adepts out in the world would like it to be.

I don't think you are quite following this. The company isnt aiming to limit its own ability to achieve its political goals, it's limiting the ability of employees to promote political views while acting officially as employees.

Also I have never in my lifetime of working with many libertarian programmers heard anyone aggressively push their libertarian views in a way aimed at changing a companies internal politics. Also never heard a conservative or even really a traditional Democrat do this.

This is almost strictly a leftist thing.