Crypto's Philosopher King

Coinbase's BRIAN ARMSTRONG created one of crypto's central players, a fee-gushing monster that currently holds more than a tenth of all the Bitcoin ever minted. But now, in the cause of "decentralization," he's making a risky pivot. It's easy to be an idealist when you're a billionaire.

- Javier Paz

"We're at a really exciting moment for crypto," enthuses Brian Armstrong, chief executive and cofounder of Coinbase, the largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange in the world. "There is a shift happening from crypto being primarily an asset class that people want to trade to speculate on to it becoming more and more used for daily utility," he insists. "Four hundred million people or so have used crypto globally."

That's debatable. When it comes to crypto, most people only care about prices, and those have been on a tear lately. Bitcoin has more than doubled in the last year to around $58,000. More than 20 crypto ETFs holding $54 billion in digital assets are trading in the U.S. Crypto is more widely held than ever and has become an important topic in the presidential election. With Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried now both in prison, Armstrong has emerged as the movement's most prominent spokesperson.

Given that Coinbase's stock mirrors trading in Bitcoin, Armstrong is a billionaire seven times over at age 41. The cryptocurrency exchange he cofounded 12 years ago to become the "Gmail for Bitcoin" has a market capitalization of $40 billion and crypto assets under its custody of $270 billion. That includes holding more than $20 billion for BlackRock ($10 trillion in assets under management), now the world's largest crypto ETF provider. In 2023, the company, which makes most of its money from trading fees, netted 895 million on revenue of $3.1 billion. This year is on track to be much better: In the first six months of 2024, Coinbase's revenue amounted to $3.1 billion but net income soared to $1.2 billion.