Frederick "Fred" Ernest Ehrsam III, is an American business executive and investor who is the co-founder and managing partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm. He is also the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange

Coinbase 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 and the company lacks a physical headquar ...

Education and early life

Ehrsam was born on May 10, 1988 in Boston, growing up in

Concord, Massachusetts Concord () is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. At the 2020 census, the town population was 18,491. The United States Census Bureau considers Concord part of Greater Boston. The town center is near where the conflu ...

. He played video games professionally in high school, and was an avid

World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...

player, which introduced him to the concept of in-game digital currencies. In 2010, Ehrsam graduated with distinction from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, earning a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

with a minor in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

. At Duke, he was a member of the

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Sigma Alpha Epsilon (), commonly known as SAE, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. It was founded at the University of Alabama on March 9, 1856. Of all existing national social fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is t ...

fraternity.

Career

After graduating from Duke, Ehrsam became a foreign exchange trader at investment bank

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. He learned about Bitcoin from a Georgetown University professor's paper, and began trading in his free time.

Coinbase

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. The two met on the Bitcoin

subreddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

forum. Ehrsam served as Coinbase's first President. Ehrsam reportedly reached out to his alma mater Duke to invest in Coinbase's 2015 Series C. He increased Duke's initial investment a hundredfold. In January 2017, he announced he was leaving the company, but would remain on its board. 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. Ehrsam was featured as one of the main protagonists in the 2020 novel "Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street".

Paradigm

In 2018, Ehrsam co-founded cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm with former

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

investor Matt Huang. They founded the company to invest in cryptocurrencies and the companies that focus on that market, and became the firm's managing partners. As of October 2020, the company had made 28 investments in cryptocurrency related companies. On November 15th, 2021, Paradigm closed the largest-ever cryptocurrency venture capital fund at the time. The fund raised a total of $2.5 billion to invest in nascent cryptocurrency and Web3 projects.

Recognition

*In 2013, Ehrsam was named to TIME Magazine's list of 30 People Under 30 Changing the World. *In 2014, at age 25, Ehrsam was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 list.

References