Fred Ehrsam

Fred Ehrsam founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in 2012 with Brian Armstrong. It has since grown into the largest U.S. crypto brokerage.

Ehrsam left the company in 2017 but remains on the board and still owns about 4% of its stock; Coinbase went public in 2021.

In 2018, he cofounded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment firm with more than $8 billion in assets.

Ehrsam graduated from Duke and worked as a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs for two years before starting Coinbase.

Growing up, he played thousands of hours of World of Warcraft, where he first learned about the concept of in-game digital currencies.