But when Coinbase co-founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam first started the company in 2012, "a bitcoin was worth $6 and only known by a few nerds on the internet," EhrsamAt the time, "bitcoin was the crazy idea that the world could have a digital money for everyone," he said.
Armstrong and Ehrsam first met on Reddit and shared a bullish view on bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space as a whole, Ehrsam said on Twitter. In turn, they decided to launch Coinbase with the "mission" to "make crypto easy to use." Although the company currently has a multibillion-dollar valuation, its beginnings were "not glamorous," Ehrsam said. "Coinbase launched out of a two bedroom apartment we shared with another company."But between 2014 and 2017, Coinbase faced "serious hardship," Ehrsam said. "In the 3 years ... the outside world thought crypto was dead."