Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, has put forward his perspective on the future of crypto, claiming that mainstream adoption needs to start small before it can rise to be used frequently on day to day errands.

According to Armstrong, instead of clambering for crypto usage at big coffee chains, the crypto leaders and influencers of today should instead focus on delivering value to people without access to financial services, and concentrate on cross-border payments.

Speaking at the Consensus event in New York, Armstrong said that the initial steps for future adoption should be ‘niche.’ His ideas involved firstly handing out crypto to thousands around the world, usually during an ICO token sale which will open crypto to people who may not have had access to financial institutions. The second is for those who are making large sums of bank transfers. Armstrong hopes that these areas will be the catalyst for more mainstream adoption.

He added:

“What you typically see in these markets is certain niche areas are adopted, and then it eventually becomes more and more mainstream. In crypto, the most mainstream thing you can think of is swiping your credit card at Starbucks. That will probably be the last area that’s disrupted by crypto.”

Coinbase is a digital currency exchange based in San Francisco, California. They broker exchanges Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in 32 countries, and Bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide.

Armstrong spoke on his company saying that although 70% of crypto traffic is retail, the custody platform which they launched during last year’s Consensus meeting has reportedly “crossed a billion dollars AUM [assets under management] for institutions,” meaning 70 institutions have signed up.

In terms of the future of Coinbase, instead of crypto as a whole, Armstrong was very positive. He claimed that Coinbase was looking to add more strings to their bow alongside their Coinbase Pro, a site for experienced traders which has seen over 60% of users coming from institutions and Coinbase Custody.

Armstrong noted:

“They want to do OTC trading, they want to do staking, they want to do voting and do governance on-chain.”

With this bullish trend and more and more major institutions like eBay and Facebook getting into the industry the future is certainly bright for the crypto industry.