Brian Armstrong Explains Why He Agreed To Star in a Film About Crypto and Coinbase

Coinbase Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong has announced that on Friday (October 7) a documentary film named “Coin” about his firm will be released on multiple streaming services, including YouTube, iTunes, and Amazon Prime.

The film, which is one and 28 minutes long, is directed by ten-time Emmy®-winning filmmaker Greg Kohs, and it “chronicles the rise of a visionary founder in crypto who harnesses the power of this emerging technology to promote a mission of global economic freedom.”

The cast includes Brian Armstrong, Vitalik Buterin, Hayden Adams, Alex Gladstein, Brian Brooks, and David Chaum.

On October 4, Armstrong took to Twitter to say the following about the film:

“we’ve been working with director Greg Kohs on a documentary about cryptocurrency and Coinbase over the last three years, and it will be coming out this Friday… We gave Greg and his team unprecedented access inside the company, showing the crazy ups and downs of building a tech startup all the way to us becoming a public company. He shows it all – the good, bad, and ugly… I agreed to do this documentary because I wanted to demystify what it takes to build a tech startup and encourage more people to start companies. I also wanted to demystify crypto…

“The world tends to either vilify founders or put them on a pedestal. Neither is true – they’re just regular people trying to make something that people want. And everyone working in crypto believes it can create a more fair, free, and global financial system… As the saying goes, starting a company is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. It takes incredible determination and a bit of luck.

“But if you succeed, you can change the world, and generate enormous value for millions of people… My belief is that technology is the best lever we have to solve the world’s problems and improve the human condition, and I want to encourage more people to start tech companies. So I decided to pull back the curtain and show people what it’s really like…

“I got in touch with Greg after seeing another film he created called AlphaGo, about DeepMind’s program that defeated the Go champion, Lee Sedol. It was a powerful story, and it’s what convinced me to trust him to tell our story… hope you all go and see the film – and that policy makers see it as well. I believe it will help advance the cause of cryptocurrency, showing the motivations of the many hard working people driving this industry forward.“