Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong (born January 25, 1983) is an American businessman and investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, which he co-founded with Fred Ehrsam. He is also co-founder of NewLimit, an anti-aging startup.

Early life and education Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983, near San Jose, California; both of his parents were engineers. He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory. Armstrong attended Rice University in Texas, where he 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 Airbnb, he saw the difficulties of sending money to South America. 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 over fifty meetings to find a perfect co-founder.

Coinbase

In 2012, Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins and other digital currencies. Armstrong was its first CEO. A 2018 funding round valued the company at $8.1 billion, and in December 2020, the company filed with the SEC to go public through a direct listing. Following a direct listing in April 2021, Coinbase's market capitalization rose to $85B, and according to Forbes, , Armstrong has a net worth of $2.4 billion.

ResearchHub Armstrong self-funded and founded the scientific research site ResearchHub, modeled on the GitHub code repository, as a way of making research papers available to the public.

NewLimit Armstrong co-founded NewLimit to increase human health span by targeting the biology of aging. NewLimit's primary research focus is epigenetic reprogramming. In May 2023, the company raised $40 million in a Series A investment round.

Support for special economic zones In January 2025, Armstrong announced that Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital wing of Coinbase, would invest in Próspera, a charter city off the coast of Honduras that is set to expand its de-regulated model under the United States' Freedom Cities initiative that's been launched by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Armstrong previously expressed interest in de-regulated economic zones in a podcast interview quoted in The New Republic, saying, "I would like us to all in crypto think about how we actually go create physical places in the world to preserve freedom over the long term. I think that’s ultimately crypto's destiny."

Prediction-market controversy In November 2025, Armstrong drew criticism after deliberately speaking a series of cryptocurrency-related terms at the end of Coinbase's third-quarter earnings call. The unscripted remark appeared intended to influence online prediction markets that let users wager on whether particular words would be mentioned during the call. Industry figures criticized the act as market manipulation.

Political views Armstrong wrote a blog post in September 2020 calling Coinbase a "Mission Focused Company", discouraging employee activism and discussion of political and social issues at work. Prior to this, Armstrong supported the Black Lives Matter movement and tweeted when George Floyd was murdered: "I've decided to speak up. It's a shame that this even needs to be said in this day and age, but racism, police brutality, and unequal justice are unequivocally wrong, and we need to all work to eliminate them from society." Armstrong had a closed-doors meeting with Donald Trump in November 2024, reportedly to "discuss personnel appointments for his second administration."

Armstrong has expressed his belief that the United States is in "slow decline" and embraces the Network State political movement made popular by former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.

Recognition In 2017, at age 34, Armstrong was ranked #10 on Fortune 40 under 40 list.

In 2019, Armstrong was named to Time magazine's 100 Next list.

In 2024, Forbes named Armstrong #2 on its Crypto Rich List, with an estimated net worth of $11.2 billion. He was also listed 145th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.