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Brian Armstrong Biography – Nationality, Parents, Age, Qualifications, Coinbase and Net Worth.
By Damian David Mar 3, 2023
Who Is Brian Armstrong?
Brian Armstrong is the the CEO and Co-founder of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume originated and located in the United States.
Brian Armstrong is a business driven personality and it is one of the major factors behind his success and that of Coinbase. Although, he has been controversial with his opinions regarding work policies and conducts in the Coinbase Company, making people including most of his employees tag him the "asshole boss".
Brian Armstrong is an American business executive, billionaire, investor, software engineer and developer popularly known as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Coinbase. He is as of March 2023 aged 40 and reported to be residing in San Francisco, California.
Brian Armstrong Parents
Brian Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983 near San Jose, California to two parents who are both engineers.
Brian Armstrong Education
Brian Armstrong attended Rice University, a private research university in Houston, Texas. After his educational journey there in 2005 he earned two bachelor's degrees, one in economics and one in computer science and a year later subsequently earned a master's degree in computer science.
Brian Armstrong Early Career
While still in Rice University, Brian Armstrong started a tutoring company that will help people in school match with other people capable of teaching or tutoring them, basically matching tutors to students.
The Tutor to Students matchmaking idea couldn't successfully grow into his dream company due to some recurring payments issues, amongst others. And after some years he sold it off for $2 Million.
In 2011, one year after learning about the cryptocurrency market through the famous Bitcoin white paper written and published by Satoshi Nakamoto, and also after working as a developer for IBM and consultant at Deloitte, Brian Armstrong started working for Airbnb as a software engineer.
Brian Armstrong And Coinbase
While working in Airbnb, he would use his spare time which was mostly the weekends and night time trying to develop a prototype of the idea;
A decentralized protocol that would provide security and backup which would work on mobile and the web, an idea he said he got from reading the Bitcoin Whitepaper.
The idea of Coinbase started as a platform that will aid in the purchase and storing of crypto assets. The idea was met with a lot of criticism from his friends and other tech personalities as many even tagged it a "scam"
Amidst all the doubts and critics, though discouraged, he didn't back down from his idea and his first big break came in 2012 when he was granted a $150,000 investment from Y Combinator.
Y Combinator is an American technology startup accelerator responsible for the initial launch of more than 4000 companies including the company Brian Armstrong was working for; Airbnb.
Brian Armstrong left Airbnb after the grant in 2012 and started building Coinbase fully. Armstrong expressed his need for a Co-founder, whom according to his words would be someone that will share his ideas and vision, someone that will compliment his weakness and improve his strengths.
To this cause he made a blog post on Hacker News expressing this need and almost two months later he met Fred Ehrsam in a Bitcoin Forum on Reddit. Together they founded Coinbase and grew it to the 14.97 billion company it is now as of February 2023.
In 2017 Fred Ehrsam left the company and Brian Armstrong expressed that he wasn't happy about Fred Ehrsam leaving as Fred was a natural leader and was pivotal in handling most of the company's fund raising.
Brian Armstrong had to create a whole executive team to fill the void that Fred Ehrsam left in the Coinbase Company. Fred is also a billionaire and still owns 6% of the company's shares.
Brian Armstrong Controversial Work Policy
There was a 5% drop of employees in the Coinbase Company after Brian announced in September 2020 that political discussions and opinions will not be tolerated while at work.
In his words Coinbase was a "Mission Focused Company" and further went on to explain in an interview as quoted;
"When allowing politics, it starts from creating a safe place, but it can get to a place where the office can become divided"
Brian Armstrong Relationship Status
Brian is not confirmed to be dating or married. However in 2018 after he arrived at a banquet nicknamed "The Oscars Of Science" with an Indonesian Actress and Entrepreneur "Raline Rahmat Shah", rumors have since been spreading about the possibility of a relationship or even marital bond between the two.
Brian Armstrong Net Worth
Brian Armstrong as of March 2023 is estimated to be worth about $2.7 Billion, according to Forbes. In 2021 he was the richest crypto Billionaire with an estimated Net Worth of $6.5 billion.
