These Crypto Billionaires Are Cashing Out

The billionaires whose fortunes are tied up in publicly traded crypto firms Coinbase Global and MicroStrategy Inc. have sold a combined nearly $850 million worth of shares in the last nine months.

Michael Saylor, the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, a software firm that has invested heavily in Bitcoin, sold $362 million of MicroStrategy shares since the start of 2024, according to regulatory filings. Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, cofounders of Coinbase, the most popular crypto exchange in the U.S., sold $216 million and $270 million of Coinbase shares, respectively, between last November and late July, filings show.

The sales have coincided with a runup in the price of some cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency and a bellwether for the industry, is trading around $70,000, more than double what it was a year ago. The total value of all outstanding cryptocurrencies is about $2.6 trillion, compared to $1.1 trillion one year ago, according to CoinGecko.

A spokesperson for Coinbase and Armstrong declined to comment. Ehrsam and Saylor did not reply to a request for comment.

Saylor, who founded MicroStrategy in the 1990s, sold 390,000 shares in the first four months of 2024. Saylor acquired those shares for $121 each by exercising an option grant that had expired at the end of April. He sold the shares at an average price of $1,147. He still owns another 2 million shares, equal to an 11% stake in the company. MicroStrategy shares, which ended Monday at $1,684, have doubled in value since the beginning of the year, and are up 300% in the last 12 months.

Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, is still the firm’s largest individual shareholder with a 15% stake. The 1.1 million shares that Armstrong has sold since November were less than 4% of his stake in the company. He previously announced in October 2022 that he planned to sell some of his shares to fund “scientific research” and invest in startups. Ehrsam, a Coinbase board member who is general partner at venture capital firm Paradigm, retains a 4% stake in Coinbase. Coinbase shares, which closed at $234 on Monday, are up more than 50% since the beginning of the year—and up nearly 600% from late 2022. Armstrong and Ehrsam have also been selling their stock through automated trading plans; they began selling batches of shares several times a month last November.

MicroStrategy’s quarterly revenues of $115 million were down slightly from last year’s first quarter. But MicroStrategy now owns 214,278 bitcoins – worth about $15 billion – according to its latest quarterly filing, making the company one of the largest single bitcoin holders. Revenues at Coinbase were $1.64 billion in the first quarter of 2024, more than double what they were in the first quarter of 2023.

The market rebound has boosted the founders’ fortunes. Armstrong is worth an estimated $10.6 billion as of Friday’s market close, making him the 211th richest person in the word, per Forbes Real Time Billionaires List. Ehrsam, who joined Coinbase as a cofounder in 2012 after seeing Armstrong’s posts on Reddit, is worth an estimated $3 billion.

Saylor, who founded MicroStrategy in the 1990s, is worth an estimated $4.9 billion – a fortune made up of his MicroStrategy stake, his own sizable stash of bitcoins and proceeds from selling MicroStrategy shares. “The writing is on the wall: Bitcoin is the future of capital, the future of money,” Saylor proclaimed this past weekend at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville. “It might make sense to get some.”