Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has revealed that Coinbase briefly considered building a blockchain in 2018 but decided against it.

Armstrong Decided Against Coinbase Chain

In an interview with Bankless, host Ryan Sean Adams drew attention to exchange-led blockchain projects. He drew attention to Binance's Binance Chain and FTX's close partnership with the Solana blockchain and asked if Coinbase had similar plans.

Armstrong said that engineers who worked for Coinbase suggested that the company should build its own blockchain. He said:

There were moments in ... 2018 or around that time frame where there were some engineers at coinbase who came to me and said, hey we should build Coinbase Chain.

However, Armstrong said that he ultimately decided against it, arguing that he did not want to create a centralized chain.

Furthermore, he says that whenever Coinbase considered creating a decentralized chain and got closer to creating one, he felt that each plan was too similar to existing projects:

Instead, those efforts led to Coinbase creating a "Protocol Team" that is now tasked with finding other blockchains to contribute to, such as Polygon, Arbitrum, and Starkware.

Coinbase Token Could Be Worth $50 Billion

Armstrong estimated that the market cap of a Coinbase cryptocurrency could have been as high as $50 billion. That estimate is likely based on the company's stock price, which currently has a market cap of $73 billion.

Public speculation around whether Coinbase will release its own token has been underway for some time, with attention most recently spurred by a recent SEC filing that suggests the exchange could introduce its own exchange token. However, that filing merely makes room for such a token, and Coinbase has not announced any official plans for a token.

Even if Coinbase were to introduce its own token, it could do so on any blockchain. As such, the company's continued interest in a token is unlikely to reignite its interest in building its own blockchain.