Brian Armstrong, the 38-year-old founder of Coinbase, took the U.S.’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume public this year. In addition to his work making mass crypto adoption easy, Armstrong has been a vocal critic of onerous financial regulations, even proposing that the U.S. appoint a crypto-specific industry watchdog. Although a proposed savings feature called Lend was waylaid by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Coinbase continues to expand its revenue streams with a non-fungible token (NFTs) platform and credit card. Recently, Coinbase worked with decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Compound to bring users greater returns on their DAI holdings. Something of a crypto “incumbent,” Coinbase continues to innovate.
Most Influential 2021: Brian Armstrong
