Brian Armstrong lacks the swagger of Jeff Bezos, the audacity of Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk’s cult of persona. Nonetheless, it’s turn into away from late that the Coinbase CEO possesses the identical imaginative and prescient and management qualities which have made these different founders tech business legends. The time has come to present the 42-year-old Armstrong his due.
I just lately sat down with the Coinbase CEO at a Goldman Sachs occasion north of San Francisco. Not like many executives, Armstrong doesn’t relish media interviews, however he lights up when given the chance to debate large concepts in crypto and expertise. This was the case once I requested him in regards to the fast-evolving world of wallets—which Armstrong believes will supplant internet browsers—and the potential for crypto-based id verification, which he thinks is coming quickly.
Armstrong has been proper about calls like this previously. Manner again in 2016, he shared a “grasp plan” that envisioned blockchain evolving right into a multi-pronged business that touched a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of individuals. It appeared fanciful on the time, and much more so when Crypto Winter set in and Bitcoin nose-dived to $2,000 the following 12 months. Right this moment, that far-flung prediction has come true. This capacity of Armstrong to see the place crypto goes, and to place his firm accordingly, is an enormous purpose why Coinbase has been the dominant firm in U.S. crypto for almost 15 years.
That is mirrored in Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings report, launched on Thursday, which exhibits how the corporate has diversified past buying and selling income, and is making actual cash on providers like stablecoins, staking, and custody. Equally spectacular is that Coinbase retains posting hefty income quarter after quarter.
A giant purpose for that is that Armstrong, like different profitable CEOs, found out easy methods to put in place a talented govt staff. Not like Coinbase’s early days, which have been riven by drama and in-fighting, the corporate is right now outlined by stability. That’s thanks in large half to the regular hand of CFO Alesia Haas, and to President and COO Emilie Choi, whose prowess at M&A has made Coinbase an important participant in each sector of crypto. The corporate’s latest acquisition of spinoff store Deribit, and its perpetual futures money machine, is wanting particularly shrewd.
Like different visionary CEOs, Armstrong has been keen to embrace unpopular and contrarian stances. These embody rejecting the “blockchain not Bitcoin” vogue through the crypto winter of 2015, and telling the New York Instances to take a hike when the paper branded Coinbase as racist for refusing to bow to the excesses of wokeness.
Armstrong has additionally made some outsize errors. In 2022, he squandered sources on a sequence of Hollywood vainness initiatives at a time when he ought to have been getting ready Coinbase to trip out an business downturn. Extra just lately, a disastrous resolution to outsource service operations to India led to a expensive hack. However even the very best CEOs don’t bat a thousand—ask Zuckerberg in regards to the metaverse or Musk in regards to the Tesla 3 roll-out. And like these leaders, Armstrong has proven he’s capable of study from his errors.
Within the coming 12 months, his CEO abilities can be examined anew. Coinbase’s most formidable abroad rivals, Binance and Tether, are getting set to ramp up U.S. operations, and the corporate must present it may well keep away from the paperwork and company bloat that befalls many incumbents. However based mostly on historical past, it might be silly to underestimate Armstrong.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
DECENTRALIZED NEWS
Mastercard eyes a stablecoin startup: Earlier this month, the bank card big misplaced out to Coinbase in its bid to accumulate stablecoin startup BVNK. Now, it’s pursuing one other stablecoin firm: Chicago-based Zerohash. The potential worth—between $1.5 and $2 billion—suggests a component of FOMO. (Fortune)
JPM hearts blockchain: America’s largest financial institution has put a personal fairness fund on its in-house Kinexys Fund Circulation chain. The providing is obtainable solely to rich shoppers, however seems to be a part of a broader tokenization push aimed toward leveraging blockchain’s intrinsic velocity and transparency as a way to promote unique property to retail. (WSJ)
Struggle combat combat: That’s the identify of the company car that oversees President Trump’s memecoin. It’s now in talks to accumulate Republic, a blockchain-based crowd-funding platform, with a view to creating $TRUMP a part of its operations for charges and capital-raising. (Bloomberg)
CZ vs. Liz Warren: The Binance founder threatened to file a defamation swimsuit over feedback by the Democratic senator that he “pleaded responsible to a felony cash laundering cost.” Warren’s camp shot again that he has no case as a result of the assertion is true and, in any occasion, is just not actionable. (The Block)
Crypto ETFs Half II: Current approvals by the SEC imply traders can now purchase Solana, Litecoin and Hedera in an ETF wrapper. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) notched round $50 million in every day buying and selling quantity however the different two flopped. (Fortune)
MAIN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK
@JasonYanowitz
Blockworks CEO Jason Yanowitz, or Yano, grew to become this week’s most important character when he unceremoniously shut the agency’s well-regarded newsroom. Media is a notoriously powerful enterprise however Yano’s new plan to remake Blockworks as an information analytics agency is not any slam dunk. That’s doubly the case for a CEO who is thought for prowess in advertising, not expertise.
MEME O’ THE MOMENT
@Crypto_McKenna
Brian Armstrong set off chatter on Crypto Twitter when he used the top of Coinbase’s earnings name to utter a sequence of phrases that appeared in “will he say it?” bets on prediction markets. Some fretted in regards to the moral implications, however others, seeing the absurdity in the entire thing, simply discovered it humorous.
