Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong unveiled a sweeping vision to democratize global capital markets through blockchain tokenization, targeting roughly 4 billion adults worldwide who lack access to equity and bond investments despite the accelerating divergence between capital and labor income growth.
The exchange published a comprehensive policy paper titled “From the Unbanked to the Unbrokered: Unlocking Wealth Creation for the World,” arguing that technological barriers and cost structures have systematically excluded two-thirds of the global adult population from wealth-building opportunities.
In the United States, labor income has grown by 57% since 1987, while capital income has surged by 136%, creating what Armstrong describes as a structural impediment to broad-based prosperity.
The paper identifies participation in capital markets as fundamentally determined by wealth and geography rather than merit or savings discipline.
Roughly 4 billion adults do not participate in equity and bond markets, with engagement rates ranging from 55-60% in the United States to below 10% in China and India.
“I think about a talented worker in Lagos or Jakarta who has the drive and ability to build a better life for themselves and their family—but who faces near-total exclusion from the same capital markets available to a wealthy investor in New York,” Armstrong wrote, emphasizing that geography rather than ability determines who gets access.
Beyond national participation rates, the research highlights severe home bias among existing investors.
Data shows domestic equity holdings far exceeding countries’ share of global market capitalization, with investors in Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey allocating over 95% of portfolios to local markets despite representing fractions of global equity value.
The policy blueprint positions blockchain-based tokenization as the primary mechanism to collapse legacy cost structures that price out small savers.
Traditional financial infrastructure operates on fixed compliance costs, custody fees, settlement delays, and minimum account thresholds that render participation uneconomic for anyone below certain wealth levels.
According to the paper, recent studies estimate that tokenized equity trading could reduce investor transaction costs by more than 30%, with efficiency gains expanding over time as atomic settlement eliminates multi-day reconciliation cycles.