Brain Armstrong is a popular influential figure and a billionaire entrepreneur in the crypto industry. This is not only because he is a CEO of Coinbase, but also because of his outspoken nature on crypto regulation and workplace political activism. Under the leadership of Brain Armstrong, Coinbase grew to be the top crypto exchange platform, with the industry-best features and benefits.

What is Brain Armstrong’s story behind building a top crypto exchange company and becoming one of the richest people in crypto? Let us find that out in this article, including Armstrong’s net worth, achievements, and more.

Brian Armstrong Biography

Educational Background of Brian Armstrong

Brain Armstrong was born in San Jose, California to engineer parents. After completing his high school education, Armstrong attended Rice University and obtained a dual Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science in 2005. Later, he went on to complete a master’s degree in Computer Science in 2006 and worked on a software business that matches students to tutors.

Career Journey of Brian Armstrong

Brain Armstrong’s career started at IBM as a software developer and then at Deloitte as a consultant. Later, he joined Airbnb as a software engineer and worked on the payment systems at the company. During the same period, Armstrong came to know about the Bitcoin whitepaper and thought that he could solve payment issues in countries like South Africa with Bitcoin.

Armstrong worked relentlessly, during weekends and overnights to develop a software that enables buying and storing cryptocurrencies. With this idea, Armstrong gave a go at the prestigious startup accelerator, Y Combinator and received a $150,000 initial investment. This small idea to solve payment issues went on to become one of the leading crypto exchange platforms today.

Coinbase

Brain Armstrong co-founded Coinbase along with Fred Ehrsam in 2012, with an ambition to enable Bitcoin and digital currency trading. Fast forward to today, Coinbase became the top crypto exchange platform in the world, with millions of users. It is not enabling the users to access cryptocurrencies but also playing a critical role in driving the adoption of cryptocurrencies.

The exchange has been expanding with more features and services such as Coinbase Pro, an advanced trading feature, Coinbase NFT marketplace, Base layer2 blockchain, etc. Another noteworthy event is when Coinbase Global stock (COIN) went public in April 2021 with a $381 per share. This event created a history, making Coinbase the first crypto company to go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

ResearchHub

Armstrong established an open science community, ResearchHub to accelerate scientific research and to make it available to the public. Similar to the Github model, which created an open platform for software engineers to collaborate, ResearchHUB aims to provide a mobile and web application that helps researchers collaborate.

To create a researchers community and to incentivize them for their contributions to the platform, Armstrong developed ResearchCoin (RSC) based on the ERC-20 token standard. In exchange for uploading content, summerzing and discussions on research, users will receive RSC tokens based on the upvotes they get.

NewLimit

Brain Armstrong’s recent venture is NewLimit, which focuses on increasing human health span. It is a biology research platform and its primary focus is epigenetic reprogramming. The company recently received $40 million in its Series A funding round in May 2023.

Brain Armstrong Net Worth and Achievements

Brain Armstrong holds a net worth of around $4.8 billion as per the latest estimations by Forbes. His net worth was more than that, around $6.6 billion, during the peak of the crypto market in 2021. Armstrong owns a 19% share of the Coinbase Global Stock, which amounts to a large portion of his net worth, making him one of the richest people in the crypto industry.

The success of Coinbase led to several of Brain Armstrong’s achievements and rewards. He was ranked 10th in Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list in 2017. And, Armstrong also grabbed a spot in “Time Magazine’s 100 Next list” in the following year. Apart from these, Brain Armstrong seized the #1 position in Forbes “Crypto Rich List”, with a net worth of $6.5 billion in 2021.

Books and Documentaries on Brain Armstrong

After founding a successful crypto exchange company, Brain Armstrong first appeared in “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” American documentary in 2014. Another documentary, “COIN: A Founder’s Story” is completely focused on Coinbase and Brain Armstrong. He was also featured in a non-fictional book focused on crypto people titled “Kings of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street” in 2020.

Brain Armstrong’s Personal Life and Philanthropy

Apart from the professional life and career journey of Brian Armstrong, no other details about his family are known. However, we have found that Armstrong was married to an Indonesian actress and model, Raline Shah. She started her career as a model and transitioned into an actress, even started working with international films.

With their nature of keeping their personal life out of the public eye, both Armstrong and Shah kept their wedding details private. However, this is yet to be confirmed officially by Brian Armstrong.

Brain Armstrong is also a philanthropist at heart and he was the first crypto person to sign “The Giving Pledge”, giving away a major portion of his wealth. Armstrong is also well-known for setting up “GiveCrypto.org” in an effort to give donations to poor people.

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