What’s the secret to becoming the most powerful person in crypto? We asked the insiders, and this is what they told us
is the hottest firm in crypto. In October it raised $420m from star investors including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Sequoia, a giant of venture capital, which valuedat $25bn—just three months after the previous funding round had valued it at $18bn.
Crypto’s demigods are ambivalent for other reasons. They argue that regulation is not a threat, yet most hop from one lenient base to the next when local watchdogs start to growl. Some outsiders doubt their sincerity; others attribute their success to timing rather than entrepreneurial vision. Believers marvel at their skill in riding wildly gyrating markets, though some wonder how long they can keep doing it. Little is known about their personal lives, beliefs and aspirations.
For Mr Armstrong the trigger was a trip after leaving college to Argentina, where reckless money-printing was fuelling hyperinflation. For Mr Hayes the trigger was more literal: his bank fired him. Having read about bitcoin on Zerohedge, a libertarian financial blog, he became enamoured with its built-in scarcity—bitcoin’s blockchain is designed so only 21m coins can ever be “mined”. A gold bug, he was intrigued by the idea that, as with the yellow metal, limited supply could give it value.
The founders see no contradiction. When he launched Coinbase—which does not list derivatives but has applied for a licence to do so—Mr Armstrong argued that setting up a trusted exchange would help make what was then a fringe product easier and safer to use. Nine years later that is still his view. CZ says his mission is not “as low as making money, but not as high as saving the world”: it is about providing people with more choice.
Mr Hayes’s high-octane lifestyle certainly comes closest to that of the fictional British spy. In 2018 he arrived at a crypto trade show in an orange Lamborghini, tweeting later to his throngs of followers, “Did you see my ride today?” He skis in Hokkaido, plays squash in Hong Kong’s amateur league, practises yoga daily and has just taken up kiteboarding. He wears tightfitting T-shirts and luxury watches.
Mr Armstrong now says he wants to be an “education resource” for regulators, hinting that he will seek to influence the rules as they are created. That is not something the other founders’ offshore exchanges can easily do. SBF, for his part, accepts that local clampdowns could very soon have practical implications for: were Hong Kong to go the way of mainland China, it might have to relocate most of its staff, which could well happen “a couple of years from now”.
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