Brian Armstrong - Combining Crypto & Charity

Chief executive of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, San Francisco-based Coinbase, considers that widespread mass bitcoin adoption for payments is going to be a long time coming.

“I think it will be quite some time before you cross the street to Starbucks in the U.S. and pay with crypto,” Coinbase's Brian Armstrong said in an interviewith Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Armstrong is confident that cryptocurrencies have their strongest use case in economies that are experiencing frequent turbulence.

"I'm bullish on countries that are going through economic crisis, over the next three to five years, where everyone has the internet and a smartphone, you could see people adopting bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as an alternative," Armstrong said.

In June Armstrong urged his team not to panic because of bitcoin price swaps. In a Twitter thread, he shared the motivational message he sent to his employees to reassure them to stay strong during the cryptocurrency down cycle.

"It can be scary the first time you see it, but to us who have been in the industry for many years, it feels like old news," Armstrong said.

Born on January 25, 1983, and brought up in San Jose, Brian Armstrong co-founded Coinbase in June 2012 and has since led the cryptocurrency exchange to serve over 20 million customers across 32 countries, providing custody for more than $10B in digital assets.

Before founding Coinbase, Armstrong worked as a Software Engineer at Airbnb from 2011-2012, focusing on fraud prevention. Previously, he worked as a Developer for IBM and Consultant at Deloitte.

Brian co-founded UniversityTutor.com with John Nelson in June 2003, while he was still a junior. The website helps tutors create a tutoring enterprise and offer their services to a host of potential student-clients. While parents and students can find any tutor(s) of their choice.

Armstrong has listed 20th on 2018 Fortune 40 under 40 just ahead of Rihanna and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin. He was first included in the ranking of the most influential young people in business in 2016.

The Coinbase CEO also made The Recode 100 list 2017, which ranks prominent people in tech, business, and media.

Brian Armstrong holds three degrees from Rice University: a bachelor's in Computer Science, a bachelor’s in Economics, and a master’s in Computer Science.

Based in San Francisco, Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where people can buy, sell, and manage their digital currency. The platform currently lists bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, and ethereum classic. It boasts over 20 million customers and is supported in 32 countries. CEO Brian Armstrong claims that around 50,000 new users continue to register for its services every day.

To protect against any loss, Coinbase stores the vast majority of the digital assets in secure offline storage. Furthermore, all currency the platform holds online is insured. Should Coinbase suffer any breach of its online storage, the insurance policy will cover any customer funds lost as a result.

For security, regulatory compliance, and fraud prevention, there are limits to how much digital currency can be bought and sold with any Coinbase account. These limits vary based on the payment method used, the account age, purchase history, and other factors.

Coinbase accepts the following payment methods:

Coinbase charges fees for each transaction. The fees for small transactions are:

The fixed fee of $2.99 also covers transactions up to $200 if either a USD wallet or bank account is used for buying and selling cryptocurrency, while a variable fee of 1.49% applies for purchases and sales made at $201 and above. For more information on the Coinbase fees click here.

In June this year Brian Armstrong launched a crypto charity fund called GiveCrypto.org The company aims to financially empower people by distributing cryptocurrency globally. Donors will give the crypto funds to recipients in need, who can then decide to keep the funds in cryptocurrency or exchange them for traditional money.

The goals behind GiveCrypto.org are to help people in need by sending money to them directly, advance real-world usage and benefits of cryptocurrency and provide universal access to an open financial system, Armstrong claimed in a blog post which announced the launch of the fund.

Currently accepting BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, XRP, and ZEC, the charity has so far raised $4 million, but aspires to raise $10 million by the end of this year, and grow to be a fund of $1 billion in the next two years.

In addition to Armstrong, other prominent cryptocurrency figures have already made sizable donations, including a $1 million gift from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and Zcash CEO Zooko Wilcox. Donors in the $100,000 and up category include venture capitalists Ron Conway and Fred Wilson, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and ZCash CEO Zooko Wilcox (full list here).