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Brian Armstrong
Executive
Brian Armstrong born January 25, 1983 is an American business executive, billionaire and investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency platform Coinbase. ( COIN ) He received media attention for his policy of keeping the workplace free of political activism
Armstrong's early career included working as a developer for IBM and consultant at Deloitte. In 2010, he came across the Bitcoin white paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2011, he joined Airbnb as a software engineer, and was exposed to payment systems in the 190 countries Airbnb operated in at the time. While at Airbnb, he saw the difficulties of sending money to South America. He began working weekends and nights to write code in Ruby and JavaScript to buy and store cryptocoins. In 2012, he entered the Y Combinator startup accelerator and received a $150,000 investment, which he used to fund Coinbase. His post on Hacker News, looking for a co-founder to get into the Y Combinator program later became a viral post in Hacker News. He eventually met his co-founder Fred Ehrsam on a reddit subgroup and is quoted to have done fifty plus dates to find that perfect co-founder.
Early Life
Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983, near San Jose, California; both of his parents were engineers. During his years in high school he attended Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Catholic, all-male, private secondary school.[citation needed] Armstrong attended Rice University in Texas, and earned a dual bachelor's degree in economics and computer science in 2005, followed by a master's in computer science in 2006. While at Rice, he started a business matching tutors to students, and after graduating, spent a year in Buenos Aires while working for an education company. While in Buenos Aires, he saw firsthand the effects of inflation that were affecting Argentina at the time.
Education
- Rice University (BA, MS) -
- bachelor's degree in economics and computer science -
- master's in computer science -
Career
- Coinbase - CEO
- Coinbase - Chairman
Recognition
2017, at age 34, Armstrong was ranked #10 on Fortune's 40 under 40 list.
2019, Armstrong was named to Time magazine's 100 Next list.
2021, Forbes named Armstrong #1 on its Crypto Rich List, with an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion as of February 2021. He was also listed 60th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.