Business

Coinbase’s latest run places Brian Armstrong among the great leaders of Silicon Valley

Published

3 months ago

November 3, 2025

Brian Armstrong lacks the swagger of Jeff Bezos, the audacity of Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk’s cult of personality. Still, it’s become clear of late that the Coinbase CEO possesses the same vision and leadership qualities that have made those other founders tech industry legends. The time has come to give the 42-year-old Armstrong his due.

I recently sat down with the Coinbase CEO at a Goldman Sachs event north of San Francisco. Unlike many executives, Armstrong doesn’t relish media interviews, but he lights up when given the opportunity to discuss big ideas in crypto and technology. This was the case when I asked him about the fast-evolving world of wallets—which Armstrong believes will supplant web browsers—and the potential for crypto-based identity verification, which he thinks is coming soon.

Armstrong has been right about calls like this in the past. Way back in 2016, he shared a “master plan” that envisioned blockchain evolving into a multi-pronged industry that touched hundreds of millions of people. It seemed fanciful at the time, and even more so when Crypto Winter set in and Bitcoin nose-dived to $2,000 the next year. Today, that far-flung prediction has come true. This ability of Armstrong to see where crypto is going, and to position his company accordingly, is a big reason why Coinbase has been the dominant company in U.S. crypto for nearly 15 years.

This is reflected in Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings report, released on Thursday, which shows how the company has diversified beyond trading revenue, and is making real money on services like stablecoins, staking, and custody. Equally impressive is that Coinbase keeps posting hefty profits quarter after quarter.

A big reason for this is that Armstrong, like other successful CEOs, figured out how to put in place a skilled executive team. Unlike Coinbase’s early days, which were riven by drama and in-fighting, the company is today defined by stability. That’s thanks in big part to the steady hand of CFO Alesia Haas, and to President and COO Emilie Choi, whose prowess at M&A has made Coinbase an essential player in every sector of crypto. The company’s recent acquisition of derivative shop Deribit, and its perpetual futures cash machine, is looking especially shrewd.

Like other visionary CEOs, Armstrong has been willing to embrace unpopular and contrarian stances. Those include rejecting the “blockchain not Bitcoin” vogue during the crypto winter of 2015, and telling the New York Times to take a hike when the paper branded Coinbase as racist for refusing to bow to the excesses of wokeness.

Armstrong has also made some outsize mistakes. In 2022, he squandered resources on a series of Hollywood vanity projects at a time when he should have been preparing Coinbase to ride out an industry downturn. More recently, a disastrous decision to outsource service operations to India led to a costly hack. But even the best CEOs don’t bat a thousand—ask Zuckerberg about the metaverse or Musk about the Tesla 3 roll-out. And like those leaders, Armstrong has shown he’s able to learn from his mistakes.

In the coming year, his CEO skills will be tested anew. Coinbase’s most formidable overseas rivals, Binance and Tether, are getting set to ramp up U.S. operations, and the company will have to show it can avoid the bureaucracy and corporate bloat that befalls many incumbents. But based on history, it would be foolish to underestimate Armstrong.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

DECENTRALIZED NEWS

Mastercard eyes a stablecoin startup: Earlier this month, the credit card giant lost out to Coinbase in its bid to acquire stablecoin startup BVNK. Now, it’s pursuing another stablecoin company: Chicago-based Zerohash. The potential price—between $1.5 and $2 billion—suggests an element of FOMO. (Fortune)

JPM hearts blockchain: America’s biggest bank has put a private equity fund on its in-house Kinexys Fund Flow chain. The offering is available only to wealthy clients, but appears to be part of a broader tokenization push aimed at leveraging blockchain’s intrinsic speed and transparency in order to sell exotic assets to retail. (WSJ)

Fight fight fight: That’s the name of the corporate vehicle that oversees President Trump’s memecoin. It is now in talks to acquire Republic, a blockchain-based crowd-funding platform, with a view to making $TRUMP part of its operations for fees and capital-raising. (Bloomberg)

CZ vs. Liz Warren: The Binance founder threatened to file a defamation suit over comments by the Democratic senator that he “pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge.” Warren’s camp shot back that he has no case because the statement is true and, in any event, is not actionable. (The Block)

Crypto ETFs Part II: Recent approvals by the SEC mean investors can now buy Solana, Litecoin and Hedera in an ETF wrapper. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) notched around $50 million in daily trading volume but the other two flopped. (Fortune)

MAIN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK

Blockworks cofounder Jason Yanowitz defends decision to close newsroom.

@JasonYanowitz

Blockworks CEO Jason Yanowitz, or Yano, became this week’s main character when he unceremoniously shut the firm’s well-regarded newsroom. Media is a notoriously tough business but Yano’s new plan to remake Blockworks as a data analytics firm is no slam dunk. That’s doubly the case for a CEO who is known for prowess in marketing, not technology.

MEME O’ THE MOMENT

A screenshot of a Twitter post making fun of Coinbase CEO's decision to sway prediction markets. — Is market manipulation funny?

Brian Armstrong set off chatter on Crypto Twitter when he used the end of Coinbase’s earnings call to utter a series of words that appeared in “will he say it?” bets on prediction markets. Some fretted about the ethical implications, but others, seeing the absurdity in the whole thing, just found it funny.

This is the web version of Fortune Crypto, a newsletter that breaks down the stories, trends, and coins that are shaping the future and business of crypto. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.

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Business

What a Walmart CEO contender’s exit reveals about when to move on

Published

26 minutes ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

There’s no such thing as a silver medal in a CEO succession race.

In November, Walmart named U.S. chief John Furner as its next CEO, crowning him the sixth leader in the history of the world’s largest retailer. The decision also quietly closed the door on another highly regarded contender for the corner office: Kath McLay, Walmart International’s CEO and a decade-long veteran of the company. On Thursday, Walmart disclosed that McLay would depart, staying on briefly to ensure a smooth transition.

The sequence was swift, orderly, and entirely unsurprising to those who study corporate succession. Boards rarely say it out loud, but experienced executives understand intuitively that once a CEO is chosen, the long-term prospects for previously whispered-about internal candidates dim almost immediately as power consolidates around the new chief executive.

That’s why many of the most ambitious leaders in American business don’t linger after a succession decision. They move deliberately, and often quickly, because the moment immediately after a board makes its choice is paradoxically when a near-CEO executive’s market value is at its peak. The executive has just been validated at the highest level—close enough to be seriously considered for the top job—without yet absorbing the reputational drag that can follow prolonged proximity to a decision that didn’t go their way.

In that narrow window, the story is still about capability. Search firms and directors see a leader who was trusted with scale, complexity, and board scrutiny, not someone who failed to clear the final hurdle.

When Jeff Immelt was named CEO of General Electric in 2001, the decision concluded one of the most closely watched succession contests in modern corporate history. Among the executives developed as credible successors was Bob Nardelli, then president and CEO of GE Power Systems. Nardelli didn’t stay to see how it might play out. Within months, he left GE to become Home Depot’s CEO.

A decade later, a different scenario unfolded at Apple, but with a similar outcome. Retail chief Ron Johnson had transformed Apple’s stores into an industry-defining, highly profitable global business and was widely viewed internally as CEO-caliber. Apple’s board had long centered its succession plans on Tim Cook, and when Cook was formally named successor to Steve Jobs, it effectively closed the door on a CEO path for Johnson. He left soon after to take the top job at J.C. Penney.

The executives who leave quickly aren’t being disloyal; they’re being realistic. Remaining too long after a succession decision can quietly erode an executive’s standing, both internally and externally, as the narrative shifts from “next in line” to “still waiting.”

At Ford Motor Co., president Joe Hinrichs was widely viewed as a leading CEO contender. When the board selected Jim Hackett in 2017, Hinrichs left not long afterward. Five years later, he resurfaced as CEO of transportation company CSX. Similarly, several senior Disney executives left or were sidelined after Bob Chapek was chosen as CEO in 2020. Most notably, Kevin Mayer, Disney’s head of direct-to-consumer and international, and a widely assumed CEO contender, departed within months to briefly become CEO of TikTok.

There are exceptions. But they tend to follow a different arc.

Although longtime Nike insider Elliott Hill was not passed over in a formal succession contest, he was widely viewed as CEO-ready when the board opted for an external hire in 2020. Hill stayed on for several years and later retired. Only after performance pressures mounted and the company embarked on a strategic reset did Nike’s board reverse course, asking Hill to return as CEO in 2024. Even then, such boomerangs remain exceedingly rare.

McLay’s departure from Walmart fits the dominant pattern. By exiting promptly while remaining to support a defined transition, she preserves both her reputation and her leverage. She leaves as an executive who was close enough to be seriously considered—not one who stayed long enough to be diminished by the process.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.

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Business

Crypto market reels in face of tariff turmoil, Bitcoin falls below $90,000 as key legislation stalls

Published

57 minutes ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

If you don’t like the price of Bitcoin, wait five minutes, and it will change. The major cryptocurrency’s volatility has been on full display to start the year, this time dipping about 7% since last week to its current price of just under $90,000 as of mid-day Tuesday.

Other cryptocurrencies have also slid. Ethereum is down 11% in the last six days to its current price of about $3,000, and Solana is down about 14% during that time to its price of about $127.

The dip comes as President Donald Trump threatened European nations with tariffs as they pushed back against his plans to take over Greenland, causing markets to scramble. Meanwhile, crypto markets faced an additional headwind as key legislation for the industry, known as the Clarity Act, became stalled after industry giant Coinbase unexpectedly withdrew its support late last week.

“President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Europe has put Bitcoin under pressure,” said Russell Thompson, chief investment officer at Hilbert Group. “The postponement of the Clarity Act in the Senate committee mainly due to concerns from Coinbase eliminated a large amount of positive sentiment in the market.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong objected to the Clarity Act primarily on grounds that crypto owners would not be able to earn yield from stablecoins. The new uncertainty over the bill, which many assumed was on a smooth path towards a Presidential signature, has shaken the price not just of crypto assets but also the share price of companies exposed to digital assets.

It’s uncertain whether the current headwinds will fade anytime soon. Trump has made his intentions of taking control of Greenland clear. When a group of European nations expressed solidarity with the Danish, he threatened those countries with tariffs, saying he would not back down until Greenland was purchased. Bitcoin and other risk assets subsequently fell, along with major stock indices, while the price of gold rose.

It’s not all gloom and doom for crypto, at least according to some analysts, who view Bitcoin’s correlation with macroeconomic forces as confirmation that digital assets have finally gone mainstream.

“Bitcoin’s reactivity is another sign of its increasing integration with broader macroeconomic forces, signaling maturation rather than fragility, even as short-term volatility continues,” said Beto Aparicio, senior manager of strategic finance at Offchain Labs.

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Business

The 9 most disruptive deals of Trump’s first year back in the White House

Published

1 hour ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

President Trump lives on deals: “That’s what I do—I do deals,” he once told Bob Woodward. On the one-year anniversary of his second presidency, he’s pushing hard to make his biggest, most disruptive deal ever, one that would bring Greenland under the control of the U.S.—and the global business community is still scrambling to adapt to his approach. Here are nine of Trump’s most unorthodox deals from the past year.

Nine deals that shook the business world

April 2, 2025: Reciprocal tariffs

Trump imposes “reciprocal tariffs” on 57 countries, with each tariff understood as an opening bid in a negotiation. Several countries have since made deals. The one-on-one negotiations, unlike the multilateral system of the past 80 years, can be chaotic for companies and economies

June 13: U.S. Steel “Golden Share”

In return for allowing Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel, Trump requires that the U.S. receive several powers over the company, including total power over all the board’s independent directors and vetoes over locations of offices and factories.

July 10: MP Materials

The U.S. pays $400 million for a large equity share in MP and signs a contract to buy all of MP’s rare earth magnets for 10 years. The reason for the equity stake was not disclosed.

July 14: Nvidia, Part 1

JADE GAO—AFP/Getty Images

Trump reverses the U.S. ban on selling Nvidia H20 chips to China in exchange for Nvidia paying the U.S. 15% of the revenue.

July 23: Columbia University

The Trump administration restores $400 million of canceled federal research funding for the university under an unprecedented multipoint deal. For example, Columbia must supply data to the federal government for all applicants, broken down by race, “color,” GPA, and standardized test performance. A few other schools later make similar deals.

August 6: Apple

At a public appearance with Trump, CEO Tim Cook announces Apple will invest an additional $100 billion in the U.S. over four years; Trump announces Apple will be exempt from a planned tariff on imported chips that would have doubled the price of iPhones in the U.S.

August 22: Intel

Intel trades the U.S. government a 9.9% equity stake in exchange for $8.9 billion that might already be owed to Intel under the CHIPS and Science Act. The deal is unusual because the company was not in immediate danger or significantly affecting the economy.

December 8: Nvidia, Part 2:

Trump reverses the U.S. ban on selling powerful Nvidia H200 chips in exchange for Nvidia paying the U.S. 25% of the revenue. Both Nvidia deals are unusual because the payments to the U.S., based on exports, appear to be forbidden by the Constitution.

December 19: Pharma

Nine pharmaceutical companies make deals with Trump that are intended to lower drug prices. This is unusual because Trump negotiated separate deals with each company, and the terms have not been released.

All eyes this week will be watching President Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the president has hinted he’ll announce some high-stakes agreements. Expect the unexpected.

A version of this piece appears in the February/March 2026 issue of Fortune.

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