Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Trolls the Prediction Markets | TechCrunch

Thursday, at the end of Coinbase’s third quarter earnings callCEO Brian Armstrong admitted he was “a little distracted” as he had been “watching the prediction market on what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call.”

“And I just want to add the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking and Web3 here to make sure we get these in before the end of the call,” Armstrong added.

Why do you blurt that out without any clear context? As Armstrong hinted, they were words that users on “listed markets” on Kalshi and Polymarket had bet would be spoken during the call. So by saying these words, Armstrong allowed some of those bets to pay off.

Bloomberg reports that while mention markets remain a relatively niche part of the prediction markets, a total of $84,000 was wagered on whether certain words would be spoken during the cryptocurrency company’s call. And while Armstrong may have helped some Kalshi and Polymarket users make some money, he also illustrated how easily these markets can be manipulated when executives become aware of them.

Jeff Dorman, CIO at digital asset investment firm Arca, wrote on X that “you need to have your head examined if you think it’s cute, smart, or clever that the CEO of the biggest company in this industry has openly manipulated a market.”

“It’s not fun to spend eight years working tirelessly to educate institutional investors on the value of crypto investing as an asset class, and helping them gain comfort in this sector, while one of the so-called ‘leaders’ openly mocks the industry with this kind of nonsense,” Dorman said.

Polymarkt, meanwhile, posted that Armstrong’s comments were “the work of the devil.”

Coinbase itself will support prediction markets through its Everything Exchange, which Armstrong touted during the earnings call, and the company has also invested in Kalshi and Polymarkt. A spokesperson for Coinbase told Bloomberg that the company prohibits employees from participating in prediction markets or related activities around the company.

After Armstrong’s comments began to attract attention, he wrote on X“lol, this was fun – it happened spontaneously when someone from our team dropped a link in the chat.”