Davos Under Currents: The Silent War Between Trump and Coinbase Will Decide the Future of the Crypto World for the Next Decade

Next week, Davos will welcome a long-missed guest. This is the first time in six years that Trump has returned to the World Economic Forum, and the official return of the US Pavilion along with the largest US delegation in history all hint at a certain shift. The forum’s topics have shifted from conceptual discussions to hardcore debates on infrastructure and institutional building.

The changing positioning of artificial intelligence is a clear signal. It is explicitly defined as “shared infrastructure” on the agenda, with topics revolving around power and large-scale governance. Policymakers’ enthusiasm for access to computing power rivals the past competition for oil. Corporate executives are contemplating how to lay a solid foundation for their organizations over the next decade—system durability has become more important than development speed.

This “system thinking” is spreading to digital finance. Daily settlement volumes of stablecoins have reached tens of billions of dollars, and tokenization is penetrating capital markets. Cryptocurrencies have moved from experimental fields into the realm of financial infrastructure. Last year, Davos’s Web3 Center signed a declaration supporting innovation and accountability, and this year, the concept will be further reinforced.

Trump’s appearance injects a political variable into this transformation. His economic narrative always revolves around sovereignty, influence, and competitiveness, and cryptocurrencies happen to be at the intersection of these three. They can bring efficiency and growth but also raise concerns about regulation and the dollar’s status. While Davos does not legislate, it is a key stage for setting policy priorities. The return of the US Pavilion indicates that this place is now regarded as a frontline for shaping technology and capital narratives.

Almost simultaneously, another piece of news comes from Washington. It is reported that $Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has refused to support a highly watched cryptocurrency bill. This move reflects a fundamental shift in industry mindset. Over the past decade, industry leaders have often called for “any clear regulation is better than no regulation”; now, as risks increase, their stance has changed.

Armstrong’s opposition is based on three core concerns. First, the bill could artificially define winners and losers, favoring existing large companies and centralized intermediaries, excluding innovative startups and open networks. Second, the bill increases compliance burdens but fails to clarify rules, potentially exacerbating legal uncertainty. Third, and most critically, provisions in the bill could weaken the core advantage of “decentralization,” pushing the ecosystem toward high centralization, damaging its resilience architecture and global interoperability, ultimately leading to innovation outflow or excessive market concentration.

His position is not against regulation per se but emphasizes that regulation must be scientific and rigorous. When cryptocurrencies become core infrastructure, poorly designed rules could lead to system fragility and stifle innovation.

Trump’s Davos trip and Armstrong’s Washington stance may seem like two isolated events, but they actually point to the same war. Trump aims to define the US’s competitive strategy in a tech-driven global economy at Davos; Armstrong is resisting unreasonable rules that could prematurely lock in the future of digital finance on the legislative front.

The core of this war is no longer hype or technological experimentation. It concerns who can control the underlying systems that sustain the future economy. As Trump steps into Davos, this battle over the fundamental rules of the modern economy has fully entered the political arena. The interaction between power, policy, and technology is undergoing profound and irreversible change.

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