Brian Armstrong lacks the swagger of Jeff Bezos, the audacity of Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk’s cult of personality. Still, it’s become clear of late that the Coinbase CEO possesses the same vision and leadership qualities that have made those other founders tech industry legends. The time has come to give the 42-year-old Armstrong his due.
I recently sat down with the Coinbase CEO at a Goldman Sachs event north of San Francisco. Unlike many executives, Armstrong doesn’t relish media interviews, but he lights up when given the opportunity to discuss big ideas in crypto and technology. This was the case when I asked him about the fast-evolving world of wallets—which Armstrong believes will supplant web browsers—and the potential for crypto-based identity verification, which he thinks is coming soon.
Armstrong has been right about calls like this in the past. Way back in 2016, he shared a “master plan” that envisioned blockchain evolving into a multi-pronged industry that touched hundreds of millions of people. It seemed fanciful at the time, and even more so when Crypto Winter set in and Bitcoin nose-dived to $2,000 the next year. Today, that far-flung prediction has come true. This ability of Armstrong to see where crypto is going, and to position his company accordingly, is a big reason why Coinbase has been the dominant company in U.S. crypto for nearly 15 years.
This is reflected in Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings report, released on Thursday, which shows how the company has diversified beyond trading revenue, and is making real money on services like stablecoins, staking, and custody. Equally impressive is that Coinbase keeps posting hefty profits quarter after quarter.
A big reason for this is that Armstrong, like other successful CEOs, figured out how to put in place a skilled executive team. Unlike Coinbase’s early days, which were riven by drama and in-fighting, the company is today defined by stability. That’s thanks in big part to the steady hand of CFO Alesia Haas, and to President and COO Emilie Choi, whose prowess at M&A has made Coinbase an essential player in every sector of crypto. The company’s recent acquisition of derivative shop Deribit, and its perpetual futures cash machine, is looking especially shrewd.
Like other visionary CEOs, Armstrong has been willing to embrace unpopular and contrarian stances. Those include rejecting the “blockchain not Bitcoin” vogue during the crypto winter of 2015, and telling the New York Times to take a hike when the paper branded Coinbase as racist for refusing to bow to the excesses of wokeness.
Armstrong has also made some outsize mistakes. In 2022, he squandered resources on a series of Hollywood vanity projects at a time when he should have been preparing Coinbase to ride out an industry downturn. More recently, a disastrous decision to outsource service operations to India led to a costly hack. But even the best CEOs don’t bat a thousand—ask Zuckerberg about the metaverse or Musk about the Tesla 3 roll-out. And like those leaders, Armstrong has shown he’s able to learn from his mistakes.
In the coming year, his CEO skills will be tested anew. Coinbase’s most formidable overseas rivals, Binance and Tether, are getting set to ramp up U.S. operations, and the company will have to show it can avoid the bureaucracy and corporate bloat that befalls many incumbents. But based on history, it would be foolish to underestimate Armstrong.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
DECENTRALIZED NEWS
Mastercard eyes a stablecoin startup: Earlier this month, the credit card giant lost out to Coinbase in its bid to acquire stablecoin startup BVNK. Now, it’s pursuing another stablecoin company: Chicago-based Zerohash. The potential price—between $1.5 and $2 billion—suggests an element of FOMO. (Fortune)
JPM hearts blockchain: America’s biggest bank has put a private equity fund on its in-house Kinexys Fund Flow chain. The offering is available only to wealthy clients, but appears to be part of a broader tokenization push aimed at leveraging blockchain’s intrinsic speed and transparency in order to sell exotic assets to retail. (WSJ)
Fight fight fight: That’s the name of the corporate vehicle that oversees President Trump’s memecoin. It is now in talks to acquire Republic, a blockchain-based crowd-funding platform, with a view to making $TRUMP part of its operations for fees and capital-raising. (Bloomberg)
CZ vs. Liz Warren: The Binance founder threatened to file a defamation suit over comments by the Democratic senator that he “pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge.” Warren’s camp shot back that he has no case because the statement is true and, in any event, is not actionable. (The Block)
Crypto ETFs Part II: Recent approvals by the SEC mean investors can now buy Solana, Litecoin and Hedera in an ETF wrapper. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) notched around $50 million in daily trading volume but the other two flopped. (Fortune)
MAIN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK
Blockworks CEO Jason Yanowitz, or Yano, became this week’s main character when he unceremoniously shut the firm’s well-regarded newsroom. Media is a notoriously tough business but Yano’s new plan to remake Blockworks as a data analytics firm is no slam dunk. That’s doubly the case for a CEO who is known for prowess in marketing, not technology.
MEME O' THE MOMENT
Brian Armstrong set off chatter on Crypto Twitter when he used the end of Coinbase’s earnings call to utter a series of words that appeared in “will he say it?” bets on prediction markets. Some fretted about the ethical implications, but others, seeing the absurdity in the whole thing, just found it funny.
