Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong announced that a crypto-centric documentary reporting his journey to build a tech startup from the ground up would be released this Friday, 7 October 2022. It will be available on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. The purpose of Founders Stories is to show the public what it is like to build a tech company from the ground up, which will encourage others who want to do the same.
Brian Armstrong co-founded Coinbase with Fred Etham in 2012. This was in the early days of the cryptocurrency movement. Etham later founded the influential crypto investment firm Paradigm, and Armstrong remained in Coinbase as the CEO. His role was to oversee its growth to the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. As the documentary points out, Coinbase went public on Nasdaq in April 2021. On day one, it peaked at a valuation of $100 billion.
The documentary director Greg Koes and his team had unprecedented access to Armstrong’s company to capture the insane ups and downs during the past three years. The documentary captures “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of building a tech startup from scratch through its transformation into a public company.
Reasons for Coinbase Documentary
Armstrong agreed to make the documentary to show what it takes to build a tech startup. The aim was to inspire more people to start a business. Another purpose is to expose cryptocurrencies.
The CEO also wants to show that the founders of the technology are just ordinary people trying to build products that people want. He said,
“Anyone dealing with cryptocurrencies is fairerfreer…I believe there is a more global financial system.”
The CEO encouraged everyone, including policymakers, to watch the film. He said it helps move the cryptocurrency cause forward. It also helps demonstrate the motivation of many hard-working individuals who move the industry forward.
Coinbase Flaws
On 26 September, Cointelegraph reported that a Blockchain firm, Veritaseum, had filed a $320 million lawsuit against Coinbase for alleged patent infringement.
Coinbase has also suffered a crash in cryptocurrency prices this year. The second-quarter earnings report revealed a lower-than-expected net profit of $802.6 million. The company complained of a lack of interest in the NFT market. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission raised an insider profile.
Fake Apple Crypto Scam on YouTube
An old interview with Tim Cook was live-streamed to draw attention to cryptocurrency scams. There are a lot of crypto scams on YouTube today, and it has become easy to spot these fake crypto videos. The artificial live stream grabbed attention by filling the description with a series of Apple keywords in both the title and description. The video was full of strange messages pointing to dubious crypto sites.
The stream showed many signs of being fake. “Apple Event Live. Apple CEO Tim Cook Apple & Metaverse in 2022.” It featured an old interview CNN Cook gave in 2018. The stream added the Bitcoin and Ethereum logos to the video stream. The CNN Money logo, too, at the “Apple Crypto Event 2022,” appeared fabricated. The addition of the “Urgent News” logo was not convincing either.
