Brian Armstrong is an entrepreneur known as the co-founder of coinbase, a digital currency exchange .
Early years and education
Brian Armstrong was born and grew up in San Jose, California on 25th of January 1983. During his high school days, he started learning CSS and Java as he had developed an interest in computer technology. Due to his nerdiness, his classmates would often look at him strangely. He got his first paying jobs by designing websites for small-scale business in some areas of San Jose, even when he was still in high school. He was also working out of his neighbor’s garage at that time as well.
In 2001, Brian decided to proceed his study at The Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he studied Computer Science and Economics. He graduated with a double Major in Economics and Computer Science in 2005. In 2006, he went ahead to study for his Master’s Program in the same university, finishing with a Master’s degree in Computer Science. He decided to spend one year in Buenos Aires, Argentina after college.
At Rice University, he spent four months as an intern at IBM in San Jose, California. Brian, a junior at that time, designed Java-based stools for Network Attached Storage devices, with his knowledge in Java. Upon completion of the university, he got the job at Deloitte and Touche as an Enterprise Risk Management Consultant.
In June 2003, while he was still a junior, Brian with John Nelson, co-founded UniversityTutor.com. Their website helps tutors create a tutoring enterprise. They offer their services to a host of potential student-client; on the other hand, parents and students can choose any tutors of their choice. The platform encourages and provides a link between tutors and students through matching attributes based on a number of parameters. These attributes include educational level, geographical locations, subject area, proximity and a host of others. The platform is very unique that it allows intending students and tutors set up their meeting points at their convenience, as it is built for convenience and ease. For eight years, from August 2003 to May 2012, he remained at UniversityTutor.com as its CEO. Brian started working at Airbnb.com while at UniversityTutor.com as a Software Engineer in May 2011. He only stayed at Airbnb.com for a year and left in June of 2012 to establish Coinbase.
The Birth of Coinbase
In Christmas of 2010, Brian came in contact with Bitcoin and became interested in it. He didn’t realized that there weren’t many Bitcoin startups at the time, but he saw this as an opportunity. Being an avid in the development of startup enterprises, he then began to think of ways to take advantage of this potentially large market and this gave birth to Coinbase.
His passion for business startups didn’t start today. He had always had a zeal for establishing businesses ever since he was in high school. Back in his high school days, Brian and his friends, always went through a lot of business ideas, made a lot of mistakes along the way, which shaped and served him well when he began to undertake serious business endeavors like Coinbase.
All his life, all he ever dreamed was to be a tech guru and he never failed to pursue a career in the tech industry. His double major in Computer Science and Economics, along with his experience in computer programming really equipped him for a foray into the tech startup arena. Having come in contact with Bitcoin and taken a considerable interest, he even looked for ways to develop the marketplace for the then emerging cryptocurrency.
In June of 2012, Brian with Fred Ehrsam, created the famous exchange service, Coinbase. The two envisioned Coinbase to be a Bitcoin marketplace, where people will be able to purchase cryptocurrency. Using Bitcoins for everyday transactions was almost impossible at that time. The Blockchain.info co-founder Ben Reeves was also part of the original founding team, but later parted ways with Brian. They parted ways due to to a difference in how the Coinbase wallet should operate. Then the remaining team enrolled their startup in the Y Combinator Startup Incubator Program. This program is famous for providing platforms for startups and investing in them. They also have invested in other startups in the past like Airbnb, Dropbox, Weebly and Reddit. In October 2012, they fully launched the company and started providing Bitcoin buying and selling services through bank transfers.
The Coinbase Takeoff
Over the years, Coinbase has had a number of notable investors and venture capitalists. Due to this, Brian and Fred have been to rapidly expand the size of the Coinbase operation in a short period of time. Brian and Coinbase were able to secure a $5 million investment from Union Square Ventures (USV) in May 2013. The USV in association with Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz invested a total of $25 million in Coinbase in December 2013.
The company grew to one million users in 2014. Acquired the blockchain explorer service Blockr and the web bookmarking company Kippt, secured the insurance covering the value of Bitcoin stored on their servers and launched the vault system for secure Bitcoin storage. The company also formed partnerships with Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, Overstock and Time Inc throughout 2014, allowing those firms to accept Bitcoin payments. Coinbase also added Bitcoin payment processing capabilities to the traditional payment companies such as Stripe, PayPal and Braintree.
Coinbase became the first Bitcoin exchange to be a recipient of direct investment from a major financial institution in January 2015. The New York Stock Exchange, in conjunction with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and with several banks, invested a whopping of $75 million into the company. In 2013-2015, the IRS (Internal Revenue Services) demanded that the company produces detailed personal information for more than a million customers with what is known as “John Doe Summons”. Coinbase fought back against the IRS. Their wide reaching summons won a victory and only had to provide information about accounts that conducted Bitcoin transactions. Either through exchanging Bitcoin for dollars or through sending and receiving coins from another Bitcoin user, worth $20,000 and above.
In 2015, the company began to offer services in Canada, but in July 2016, they announced it would halt services in August after the closure of their Canadian online payments service provider Vogogo. More than 4.7 million people had accounts with Coinbase in 2016. The number rose to 13.3 million in 2017 and this meteoric rise is due to Brian’s passion for alternative currencies. That is to build a company that would go ahead to be the first blockchain related company to attain the Unicorn status.
One of the cryptocurrency, the creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, is reported to be the third person that was hired for Coinbase platform to work upon its creation. Right after leaving his job at Google, he then began working with Brian at Coinbase. While at the company, he worked as the Director of Engineering until he left in June 2017.
The company began offering its services on a rebranded platform called GDAX (Global Digital Asset Exchange) in 2016 of May. Among the list of supported cryptocurrencies, the value token of Etherum, Ether, was added to the list. In January 2017, the New York State DFS (Department of Financial Services) issued a BitLicense to Coinbase. This move also allowed the company to offer virtual currency trading services in New York. Coinbase received authorization from the New York State DFS in March of the same year, to provide Litecoin and Etherum trading services in the state.
News broke out that Coinbase had attained the Unicorn status in August 2017, the first cryptocurrency to attain the prestigious status. For a cryptocurrency to get to the Unicorn, it must be valued at $1 billion or more and Coinbase had a valuation of $1.6 billion. Making it the first startup in the world of crypto with a valuation of more than $1 billion. Coinbase had initially raised $117 million from Andreessen Horowitz, BBVA, USAA, New York DSF and Draper Fisher, among others.
Coinbase also raised $100 million in a Series D funding at a private valuation of $1.6 billion and that included capital raised. The round was led by the top-tier growth stage venture capital firm, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), who has been involved with several companies including Twitter, Slack, Netflix, and among others. Others at the roundtable included Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Spark Capital, Section 32 and Draper Associates.
According to Coin Telegraph,the company was initially valued at $400 million in 2014. The company has witnessed tremendous growth as it is 2.5 times bigger. Investors see this growth as satisfactory and consistent. The digital currencies are having “netscape moments”, according to Brian. The pace of innovations have been accelerating, and more exciting projects and companies are being built on top of digital currency. In 2017, Coinbase became the most downloaded app on the iPhone in the US. The company was also granted access to the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme, which means they can offer almost instant fiat bank payment to its UK-based customers.
Coinbase of Today
The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For over the years, they have spread to various countries around the world. They broker exchanges of Bitcoin, Etherum and Litecoin with fiat currencies in 32 countries, carry out Bitcoin transactions and storage in over 190 countries globally. It has continued to grow despite the hiccups Coinbase has faced and Brian is a bundle of optimism. Their best interest is to advocate for less restriction. Brian believes that Bitcoin will be completely legal in the near future and that more countries will have actual currency control. He also believes that the Bitcoin in 10-15 years will surpass the dollar as a reserve currency.
Net Worth
In January 2018, Forbes had estimated that Armstrong’s net worth was between $900 million and $1 billion