The 'Brilliant Asshole' Who Almost Blew Up Coinbase - Ep.126

Jeff Roberts, staff writer at Fortune and author of the recent Audible book, “Kings of Crypto: Coinbase and the Coming Disruption of Finance,” discusses Coinbase's past, present and future. In this episode, we cover: when Coinbase duped Apple with its app and eventually got kicked out of the App Store when Coinbase's hot wallet got hacked how CEO Brian Armstrong handled challenges like the Bitcoin block size debate and an IRS summons on all its customers' activities for years how it handled the competition from Binance why that led to "screaming in the board room" the "complete mercenary" and "brilliant asshole" who tore the leadership ranks apart and led to a number of departures by top execs why Brian and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon met privately where Coinbase goes from here Take the Unchained survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/unchained2020 Apply for the editorial assistant job at Unchained! https://unchainedpodcast.com/seeking-remote-editorial-assistant/ Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.com Nexo: https://nexo.io Episode links: Jeff Roberts: https://twitter.com/jeffjohnroberts Kings of Crypto on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Kings-of-Crypto/dp/B085PY7S7H Harvard Business Review edition: https://www.amazon.com/Kings-Crypto-Startups-Cryptocurrency-Silicon-ebook/dp/B085TRJY8X Jeff’s interview with Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam at Consensus: Distributed: https://www.coindesk.com/video/the-kings-of-crypto-an-inside-look-at-the-history-of-coinbase JPMorgan banks Coinbase: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jpmorgan-extends-banking-services-to-bitcoin-exchanges-11589281201 Brian Brooks becoming acting comptroller of the Office of the Currency: https://www.coindesk.com/a-former-coinbase-lawyer-is-about-to-become-acting-head-of-us-bank-regulator Coinbase going remote-first: https://blog.coinbase.com/post-covid-19-coinbase-will-be-a-remote-first-company-cdac6e621df7 Links from news recap: https://unchainedpodcast.com/90-million-down-the-toilet/