Move Aside Paypal Mafia, The Coinbase Mafia Are The New Kids On The Block(chain)
The Coinbase Mafia Has Arrived
In 1998 during the dot-com boom a company was formed by the name of PayPal. The founders of this company became known as the “PayPal Mafia” because they not only grew into one of the largest online payment platforms in the world, but spawned some of the most impressive founders and companies ever to be seen.
We are currently in the midst of another boom/bubble known by a multitude of names; the crypto boom, ICO mania, blockchain bubble etc… In this boom/bubble another PayPal-like company has formed with its own mafia, the Coinbase Mafia. This new mafia will be behind the next Googles, Amazons and Facebooks. Perhaps Coinbase itself will become one of the next mega tech companies. Whether this current blockchain boom/bubble will pop tomorrow, in five years, or never, nobody knows, but what we do know is that the Coinbase Mafia will remain and continue to drastically impact the blockchain space.
PayPal Mafia
Mentioning all members of the PayPal Mafia and detailing every company or investment they made would simply take too long, so instead I will list a few notable examples:
Peter Thiel: Clarium Capital, Palantir, Founders Fund.
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, currently working on multiple other companies.
Steve Chen, Chad Hurley And Jawed Karim: YouTube
Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn
David Sacks: Yammer
Russel Simmons, Jeremy Stoppelman: Yelp
…and list goes on.
This group of people all coming from a single company is quite astounding. Most of them have a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but a few are even valued in billions of dollars. Beyond their personal net worth and accomplishments, some of these members have also helped fund other mega companies like: Stripe, Airbnb and Facebook. I fully expect the Coinbase Mafia’s former employees to create and fund incredible projects equal to, or even beyond that of the PayPal Mafia.
Coinbase
Coinbase was created in 2012 by founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Their mission was to bring cryptocurrency to the masses, and they were kickstarted by the legendary seed accelerator firm, Y combinator. Coinbase has proved to be one of the best exchanges, with a clean interface and an intuitive process to purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. I bought my very first Bitcoin on Coinbase back in 2013, when there were less than 1 million users. As of September 2017 Coinbase has 10.2 million users and is still growing at a breakneck pace. Needless to say, they have accomplished their mission of making cryptocurrency accessible on a large scale.
Fred Ehrsam is a cofounder of Coinbase. He left the company in January of this year and has hinted that he will make a reappearance within the crypto space. His knowledge and skillset is undeniably vast and he is capable of creating something exceptional. For now we will have to wait and see, but Fred is the person that I am most excited for.
Olaf Carlson-Wee
It is likely that Olaf is the most well known member of the Coinbase Mafia because of his successful hedge fund. Olaf was Coinbase’s very first employee, but left in 2016 to start Polychain Capital, which is now one of the largest cryptocurrency hedge funds in the entire space. They recently raised 200 million dollars for their fund and have backing from the who’s who in silicon valley such as; Sequoia Capital, Union Square Venture, Andreessen Horowitz and of course Founders Fund (a venture fund founded by the PayPal Mafia). With Olaf’s incredible passion and knowledge in the crypto-space I see Polychain dominating the crypto markets for a long time.
Nick was an early employee at Coinbase during their first period of massive growth. He was a business development specialist for 2+ years before he left to work at Runa Capital. Here, Nick honed his venture capital skills, and has since used them to create his own crypto venture capital fund called 1confirmation. His fund has backing from famed billionaire investor, Mark Cuban. It is still too early to tell what Nick and 1confirmation will do in the space, but obviously the future looks bright.
Linda was a former product manager at Coinbase. She posts frequently to Medium with precise and easy to understand overviews on particular cryptocurrencies, which has earned her a large following. Linda is also an advisor to 0x which is a token trading protocol for the Ethereum network. She is now starting a crypto fund with Jordan Clifford, who is also a former Coinbase employee. I will continue to watch Linda’s exciting progression in the crypto space.
Nadav is currently (I suspect not for long) the only member of the Coinbase Mafia that has left to create his own blockchain project. The project is called Dharma and it is an open source peer-to-peer lending protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that is already live on the testnet. This project has immense potential, and with Nadav being a member of the Coinbase Mafia I would say he has a good chance of pulling it off.
Brian is probably the single most important catalyst to this Coinbase Mafia formation. His uncanny ability to discover incredible people with amazing talent, and his managerial style of encouraging growth within and out of Coinbase is what makes it possible for the Coinbase Mafia to even exist. Brian’s grand vision of enabling people from all over the world and all walks of life to buy and sell cryptocurrency is off to a magnificent start. I guarantee that Brian will continue to shape influential entrepreneurs, and Brian himself will become a billionaire leading Coinbase.
Bright Future
As we can clearly see the Coinbase Mafia is here to stay and growing rapidly. While Coinbase continues to flourish under Brian’s leadership, he will continue to enable phenomenal entrepreneurs to develop their skills at Coinbase before they set out on their own paths. This network of people will go on to strengthen the entire blockchain ecosystem. I highly encourage everyone in the blockchain space to keep close tabs on Coinbase and all of its current and former employees. Even though we have already seen incredible growth within this network, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Coinbase Mafia is just getting started.
Connect with me on Twitter. Always happy to chat Blockchain&Crypto.
