Brian Armstrong
Coinbase’s co-founder and CEO, who takes a $1 million salary and no new equity — so almost all of his reported pay is the cost of protecting him.
Read Brian Armstrong’s net worth & biography →
Pay vs performance
what happened while he earned itNo score, no opinion. Compensation is filed; stock and S&P are market returns over the window shown; revenue and EPS are latest reported vs the prior year. You decide.
Why this pay?
- His fiscal 2025 Summary Compensation Table total was $9.7 million — but $8.7 million of that is "all other compensation," almost entirely personal-security and private-aircraft costs. He draws a flat $1 million salary and took no new stock or option grants; his real upside sits in a 2020 pre-IPO performance award, not in this figure, and should not be confused with his multi-billion-dollar net worth.
Worth knowing
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong takes a $1 million salary and no new stock. Most of his reported pay — millions a year — is personal security and private-jet costs, not wealth.
Source: Coinbase proxy (DEF 14A) · More facts →
Quick facts
Compensation breakdown
DEF 14AAll-other is ~$7.64M personal security + ~$1.07M chartered aircraft. No new equity — his upside is a 2020 pre-IPO award, not this SCT total. Source: Coinbase 2026 Proxy (FY2025) →
Compensation history
salary + cash vs stock, from the proxiesRelated intelligence
every filing on Coinbase, one hop awayCareer
Compare pay with
Every figure ties to a filing. Compensation is the total from Coinbase's Summary Compensation Table for FY2025(grant-date values, which can differ from what an executive realizes when awards vest). We publish what the filings say, and we don't grade people. Photo: TechCrunch / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons.