This is the third in a series of stories examining the crypto industry’s high-stakes 2024 foray into politics and campaigning. The first explored the electoral track record of Fairshake PAC’s strategy and the second its intense use of a 2010 Supreme Court stance.
The leaders of the companies responsible for the river of money that flooded U.S. political shores this year have already benefited tremendously from the outcome of last month’s election — increasing their personal fortunes by billions of dollars, far outpacing the large spending they devoted to crypto-friendly candidates.
Coinbase Inc. (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong and his company devoted some $74 million to the industry’s dominant political action committee, Fairshake, putting Armstrong in a close lead over a few other crypto insiders. That’s an especially significant amount of money from a company that booked about $95 million in 2023 profits. But the elections went their way, and the company’s value has ballooned by $21 billion since Nov. 4, the day before in-person voting began and the outcome became clear.
In a pre-programmed series of trades starting less than a week after the election, Armstrong sold $100 million worth of his Coinbase shares. Those same shares on the night before the election had been worth about $39 million less. A week after that, he cashed in about $313 million — all part of a selling strategy he’d set in motion if the price spiked.
Since then, the co-founder and CEO sold smaller amounts week after week, for a total of about $437 million for stock that was worth $308 million before the victories of President-elect Donald Trump and a slate of congressional lawmakers backed by crypto. In other words, the pro-crypto sentiment surging after the election outcome that Armstrong helped shape earned him an additional $129 million in wealth for the shares he sold.
He still owns more than 10% of the largest U.S. crypto exchange, and the value of about 24 million shares tucked into his trust, according to the latest Securities and Exchange Commission filings, is about $6.4 billion — up near $2 billion since Nov. 5.
Armstrong’s stock sales were planned less than three months befor
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Author: Jesse Hamilton
