Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, at a Goldman Sachs conference, highlighted the potential of crypto for payments, emphasizing the efficiency of Coinbase's layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution, Base. This solution has reduced transaction times to under a second and fees to less than $0.01. Armstrong envisions a future where fast, cheap, and global payments enable new applications, such as microtransactions for social media interactions and more frequent payroll cycles. He compares the anticipated growth in crypto payments to the explosion in messaging volume following the reduction of costs, suggesting that reducing friction in payments could similarly increase adoption and activity.