Fred Ehrsam | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Frederick Ernest Ehrsam III May 10, 1988 |
| Education | Duke University |
| Known for | Coinbase |
| Website | www.fredehrsam.org |
Frederick "Fred" Ernest Ehrsam III [1] is an American businessman, and the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. [2]
Ehrsam was born on May 10, 1988, in Boston, growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. [3] He played video games professionally in high school, and was an avid World of Warcraft player, which introduced him to the concept of in-game digital currencies. [4] [2]
In 2010, Ehrsam graduated with distinction from Duke University, [4] earning a B.S. in computer science with a minor in economics. [5] At Duke, he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. [6] [7]
After graduating from Duke, Ehrsam became a foreign exchange trader at the investment bank Goldman Sachs in New York City. [2] [8] He learned about Bitcoin from a Georgetown University professor's paper, and began trading in his free time. [4]
In 2012, Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong co-founded Coinbase in an apartment in San Francisco, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins and other digital currencies. [9] [4] The two met on the Bitcoin subreddit forum. [4] Ehrsam served as Coinbase's first President. [10] In January 2017, he announced he was leaving the company, but would remain on its board. [9] He also reportedly still owned 8.9% of Coinbase stock as of April 2021, and was assigned to the company's audit committee before its April 2021 public offering. [10]
In 2018, Ehrsam co-founded cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm with former Sequoia Capital investor Matt Huang. [11] They founded the company to invest in cryptocurrencies and the companies that focus on that market, and became the firm's managing partners. [12] [13]
In October, 2023, Ehrsam stepped down from his managing partner role at Paradigm and announced he will continue to act as a general partner. [14]
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. He was #1 on the Midas List in 2022. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 evangelist.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blockchain.com is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency exchange and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and analytics.
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Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$3 billion in January 2024. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million. It was the first cryptocurrency company to obtain a bank charter.
Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is an American cryptocurrency exchange and custodian bank. It was founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of bitcoin. Launched in 2017, Bitcoin Cash is considered an altcoin or spin-off of bitcoin. In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash further split into two separate cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).
Tether is a cryptocurrency stablecoin launched by Tether Limited Inc. in 2014.
A cryptocurrency bubble is a phenomenon where the market increasingly considers the going price of cryptocurrency assets to be inflated against their hypothetical value. The history of cryptocurrency has been marked by several speculative bubbles on a boom to bust cycle.
Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan shortly before the Chinese government restricted cryptocurrency companies. Binance subsequently left Japan for Malta and currently has no official company headquarters.
Brian Armstrong is an American business executive, billionaire, and investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency platform Coinbase. He received media attention for his policy of keeping the workplace free of political activism.
USD Coin (USDC) is a cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the United States dollar. With $41 billion in assets under management, USDC is issued by Circle and is distinct from a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts to create liquidity pools for the execution of trades. It is an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product because it uses smart contracts to facilitate trades instead of a centralized exchange. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. As of December 2024, Uniswap is estimated to be the second largest decentralized exchange and the seven-largest cryptocurrency exchange overall by daily trading volume.
Pantera Capital is an American hedge fund and venture capital firm focused on digital assets headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The fund specializes in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. It is one of the largest digital asset funds in the world by managed assets.
Olaf Carlson-Wee is an American entrepreneur and the CEO of cryptocurrency fund Polychain Capital, which he founded in 2016. He was the first employee of Coinbase. Carlson-Wee was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018.
Polychain Capital (Polychain) is an American investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on investments related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Arkham Intelligence, branded Arkham, is a global company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform as well as a public data application that enables users to analyze blockchain and cryptocurrency activity. Founded by Miguel Morel in 2020, the company's platform utilizes AI to identify and catalog the owners of blockchain addresses. Its partners include various cryptocurrency and blockchain companies.
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