The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 70 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lemkin: Coinbase's 10% high-yield crypto program is a pyramid scheme
“And even, I know Coinbase is the good one, but where are they getting this 10%? It's a pyramid scheme. It's fraud.”
Chirls: Coinbase would have succeeded without Andreessen Horowitz and USV
“Would Coinbase not have been successful? If they hadn't take money from Andreessen Horowitz and USV. No, I think they would have been just as successful.”
Brian Armstrong calls Sam Bankman-Fried brilliant and praises FTX execution speed
“I think Sam is a brilliant guy. I've gotten a chance to talk to him on a number of occasions. I think he's done a really good job of kind of generating interest in the company with his public persona, which is something that, you know, as more of an introvert,…”
Armstrong: Internal political activism was a major distraction at Coinbase
“We weren't aligned internally about being apolitical. And we had a small vocal percentage of the company just kind of who thought we should be engaging in all these social issues. So it was a major distraction internally.”
Armstrong: Gary Gensler failed to create clear crypto rules and has been uncooperative
“I think that he had a major opportunity to come in and actually like clearly regulate the industry and publish clear rules and say, this is a security. This is not work with the CFTC and other areas of government to kind of create a clear framework, which prot…”
O'Driscoll: Without open source, Coinbase's AI costs would have sextupled
“The counter counterfactual is if those open source product didn't exist, the Brian Armstrong quote would tweet would have been, We were paying ten million dollars six months ago for our AI intelligence. Now we're paying 60.”
O'Driscoll: Brian Armstrong's ban on political discussion at Coinbase was entirely correct
“In retrospect, an excellent call. I mean, an excellent, not only because it wasn't just a political call, it wasn't taking the other side, it was taking no side, which has turned out to be entirely the correct position.”
a16z's best fund ever saw Databricks return 7x and Coinbase 5x
“Our best performing fund in the history of the firm is actually a one billion dollar fund. So it's a large fund, right? In that fund, Databricks has returned seven X the fund so far. Coinbase has returned already DPI five X of the fund.”
Tenev: Robinhood US retail crypto volume is close to Coinbase
“Well, on retail in the US we're kind of like close to the same size as Coinbase. We charge a lot less, so we have less revenue. But in terms of volumes and retail volumes, It's pretty close particularly if you look at supported coins.”
Tisch: Small stakes in outlier companies outperform strict ownership targets
“Every VC's math works if you fund great companies. And so it's not about This, like, ownership threshold. If anybody owned one percent of Facebook, one percent of Uber.1% of Coinbase, your math works. Your math works really well, and it scales.”
Ripley Predicts the SEC Will Lose Its Crypto Enforcement Lawsuits
“They won't be successful, right? They've lost an XRP. They've lost the grayscale thing. They just kind of continue to not see success with these with these actions. So I don't think they, you know, they won't be successful.”
Tomaino reveals he was effectively pushed out of Coinbase
“Well, frankly, I mean, I got pushed out of Coinbase. Like, I wasn't a, Great employee, I think is the truth. I think I did a lot for Coinbase in the early days. But I wasn't, Coinbase got to a certain point where I wasn't great at kind of office politics and f…”
Armstrong: Coinbase will evolve into a holding company of decentralized units
“The future is a little hard to predict, but look, here's one vision I've had for it, which is that I think Coinbase Global, the parent company is starting to become more like a holding company over time. And we have this portfolio of different products, differ…”
Brian Armstrong: Crypto brands must stand up to bad government occasionally
“This is where like we often struggle as a company where, you know, 95% of the time, I think being the most trusted brand in the space is about working with the government. And I'm happy to show up in D.C. Anywhere, and I work with people, and we, 95% of the ti…”
Armstrong: FTX and Binance took riskier international regulatory paths than Coinbase
“I think generally, I think both FTX and Binance have been really good at execution and You know, they've taken a different risk posture, I would say, internationally as well, which, you know, we'll, we'll see, have to see what happens with that. But Coinbase i…”
Harlem Capital aims for consistent 3x-5x net returns over single outlier wins
“And so for us, like we're not targeting to be that one coin based outcome, that one stripe outcome, like we're saying over time, how do we get LPs to know that we can consistently generate three to five X net returns.”
Coinbase Expects New Hires to Deliver Within 30 Days or Leave
“We're going to want to see real action, and that means that if you really don't do something amazing in the first 30 days, you're probably not going to be a fit here, and it's actually the most compassionate thing to say, you know what? Bad on us, because we p…”
Weinberg: It is naive for modern companies to claim complete societal neutrality
“To me, I think it's a little naive to think that a company can just say, we stand for absolutely nothing but our business. And maybe that was true 5060 years ago, but I just don't believe that that's true today.”
Armstrong: ICOs face short-term correction before broad long-term adoption
“So I think the long-term trend for ICOs is very positive, or token sales. I think that's a new thing that's been invented, and it will probably get a lot of adoption. I think in the short term, we'll probably see a correction on it, if I had to guess.”
Rajaram: State licenses make Coinbase irreplaceable for crypto custody
“Coinbase, when I'm on the board, is a great example. They have MTLs, money transmission licenses, state by state. There is with the Fini, CN, all of those things. It makes it impossible for a company to use anybody else than Coinbase to custody their crypto be…”
Marcus: Coinbase will succeed long term by playing by regulatory rules
“Brian Armstrong has done a really, really good job at balancing this and from the get-go decided that he wanted to play by the rules and has been desperately demanding clear rules from the various regulators. And, you know, certainly I think over the long run,…”
Hockey: Coinbase was punished for following regulations while competitors like FTX cheated
“I hope they do really well, because I think what they have tried to do very well is they've tried to embrace regulation and they've tried to do things the right way. They've tried to do things that are right by the regulators and they're right by consumers. An…”
Hockey: Restricting legit crypto companies drives consumers to harmful black markets
“I'm probably a hopeless optimist, but I think what it shows is actually, if we don't allow the good players, like a Coinbase, et cetera, to move quickly and actually be able to innovate, those people, like those people are gonna go somewhere, right? People wan…”
Armstrong: Institutional clients continue signing up for Coinbase at a massive rate
“Institutions are still signing up at a massive rate.”
Armstrong: Coinbase overhired in 2021 and it was a mistake
“We over hired, I would say in 20, 21. That was a mistake.”
Job Candidates Inspired by IBM Are Not a Fit for Coinbase
“I will often ask people that I'm interviewing, what other companies would you interview at? What other companies are you inspired by? Now, no offense, but if they say something like IBM, which I've definitely had, they're not going to be a fit for Coinbase. If…”
Choi: Brian Armstrong Stamped Out Political Culture and Side-Lobbying at Coinbase
“Brian Armstrong, there's no political culture here, and I don't just mean that about his apolitical post. I mean about, you don't lobby people on the side. You don't have this thing where you talk about Somebody in the room one way, and then after they leave t…”
Coinbase Conducts All M&A Using RAPID With Single Decision-Makers
“We're not a committee. We're not a consensus based culture. There has to be one decision maker at the end of the day. If you have the right people as part of that rapid, you're going to be so buttoned up about how you can run fast on making quick M and a decis…”
Taggar: Gary Tan Saved Instacart and Wired Money to Coinbase
“I think it was he who accepted Instacart into Y Combinator after the deadline had passed for applications, and similarly with Coinbase early on, I think this is public, but there was a moment where they were having a bit of a liquidity crunch, and Gary just wi…”
Armstrong: Coinbase remains neutral and supports all safe digital assets
“At Coinbase, we're not really pro one digital currency or another. We're in a situation where we're actually looking to support all digital currencies that people want to trade that are safe with some reasonable threshold.”
Rajaram: Coinbase has 12 product lines generating over $100M in revenue each
“Coinbase has 12 doing a hundred million revenue.”
Taneja passed on Coinbase's seed round introduced by Paul Graham
“So I'll never forget that one of my big messes when Paul Graham asked me to look at the seed round of Coinbase, and I said to myself, a Bitcoin ATM? What is that? I had no idea what this industry was about to become. Like, I mean, I, it still haunts me.”
Anduril operates internally as an apolitical company following Coinbase's philosophy
“Internal to Anderrill, like we're an apolitical company. Like we don't talk about personal politics inside the company. We kind of subscribe to the Brian Armstrong Coinbase kind of philosophy of like, we're here for a mission.”
Saarinen: Airbnb and Coinbase had no sales teams during his tenure
“Airbnb and Coinbase, they weren't very like go to market driven companies. They're not sales cult. Like you didn't have sales people in the company”
Coinbase Exchange Was Built by a Single Engineer in Six Months
“There was like, for example, Coinbase exchange, which is the trading platform they have that initially was built by one guy. Like he was in a room and then he was building it for maybe six months, but he was built by one guy. And then when it went live, it, It…”
Brex Built Its Enterprise Platform in One Year to Acquire Major Clients
“And it took us, you know, a year to get something that worked. And that's how, you know, ultimately, we closed customers like DoorDash, like Coinbase, like Robinhood, you know, like all these large enterprise customers that would not have traditionally come to…”
Tomaino lost his entire $50K net worth in a phishing attack
“I got an email saying that Coinbase updated terms of service. I clicked the link to try to update the service, log into Coinbase to do so, logged into Coinbase with my password, boom the hacker Got into my account and drained all my Bitcoin. So it wasn't a ton…”
Armstrong: Coinbase generated $7B revenue and $3B profit in 2021
“We did do, we did seven billion in revenue, three billion in profit.”
Armstrong: I have never fired an employee in anger on the spot
“And I, frankly, I've never done that once in my whole life. I've never fired somebody in anger in the moment, right?”
Armstrong: Startup goals are largely secured once 60% to 70% complete
“I don't usually by the time I accomplished some goal that I've set, maybe I've worked on it for years by the time I actually hit it. I'm usually don't not even thinking about it. I'm like, cause you know, by the time you're at like, 60%, 70%, you're like, oh m…”
Coinbase raised $3B debt in one week with zero CEO meetings
“You know, I was kind of surprised to learn that like in, in 20, 21 you know, our CFO came to me and it was like the, you know, the markets are really good. The debt terms are really good. We should probably stock up for the next, you know, if there's another c…”
Coinbase public status unlocked deals with BlackRock and Meta
“We've been able to close deals with, you know, BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, and, you know, Meta, formerly Facebook, like we're now, especially with our Coinbase cloud business and things like that, we're now able to power things with Fort…”
Harrison: Former firm passed on Coinbase at a $1.5B valuation
“Back in the day, we passed on Coinbase at 1.5 billion”
Rabois: Passing on an early Coinbase meeting was a massive mistake
“Is this the, you know, whatever, let's say Coinbase that I, you know, was introduced to very, very early by Gary, who really, Gary Tan, who really wanted me to invest. And, you know, I basically wrote back. I really didn't want to meet them, even though I actu…”
Choi: Clear and concise communication is the key to succeeding at Coinbase
“The hallmark of successful people at Coinbase is they are excellent presenters. They are excellent communicators. They are pithy. They're strong. They get their message across.”
Choi: Showing vulnerability in key moments creates deeper employee connections
“What I learned in that moment was that in these select moments where something really matters to You kind of show yourself to be vulnerable. You create so much connection with people.”
Choi: Great corporate development executives build lifelong relationships with founders
“I want to know that founders freaking love you, and that they would just do anything for you, and that they want to work with you. The way that I have seen this manifest in my own career is that a lot of the entrepreneurs we acquired at Companies that I've bee…”