{"id":228117,"date":"2021-04-15T20:27:04","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T17:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-weathered-clash-over-blm\/"},"modified":"2021-04-15T20:27:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T17:27:04","slug":"how-coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-weathered-clash-over-blm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-weathered-clash-over-blm\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong weathered clash over BLM"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong weathered clash over BLM<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Coinbase\u2019s landmark stock listing has made billionaire CEO Brian Armstrong an instant icon of the cryptocurrency revolution \u2014 but his last major turn in the spotlight came from a dustup over the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

While the crypto exchange\u2019s 38-year-old co-founder reportedly keeps a low profile by avoiding the press and public conferences, he became embroiled in controversy last fall when he told Coinbase employees not to talk politics at work.<\/p>\n

The edict was intentionally out of step with other Silicon Valley giants that issued statements in support of Black Lives Matter and pledged to support racial justice as protests raged across the country last summer.<\/p>\n

Outlining the policy in a Sept. 27 blog post<\/a>, Armstrong said he wanted to avoid \u201cinternal strife\u201d that has hurt worker productivity at Facebook<\/a> and Google, where staffers have long aired social and political concerns in internal chatrooms, and occasionally taken to the streets to protest. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt has become common for Silicon Valley companies to engage in a wide variety of social activism, even those unrelated to what the company does,\u201d Armstrong wrote. \u201cWhile I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The logo for Coinbase, the biggest US cryptocurrency exchange, was displayed on the Nasdaq MarketSite jumbotron at Times Square as the company made its stock-market debut on Wednesday. <\/figcaption>
REUTERS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The post sparked a backlash from critics such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who said Bitcoin is a kind of \u201cdirect activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system\u201d and that sidestepping politics \u201cleaves behind people.\u201d Dick Costolo, Twitter\u2019s former CEO, leveled more pointed barbs at Armstrong,<\/a> branding his position an \u201cabdication of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMe-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution,\u201d Costolo wrote in an incendiary tweet that likewise got blasted by critics.<\/p>\n

Armstrong\u2019s blog post also reportedly drew fire internally from Coinbase employees. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy stay and put effort into this work if it\u2019s just tokenized into recruiting points and not actually improving the sense of belonging and psychological safety,\u201d Lauren Lee, a staffer responsible for diversity inclusion who has since resigned, wrote in a Slack message obtained by The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Amid the hubbub, Armstrong \u2014 whose fortune ballooned to more than $12 billion after Coinbase went public Wednesday \u2014 offered severance packages to anyone who disagreed with his stance and wanted to leave. Some 60 people, or about 5 percent of the staff, took Coinbase up on the offer, he revealed in an Oct. 8 follow-up post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was reassuring to see that people from under-represented groups at Coinbase have not taken the exit package in numbers disproportionate to the overall population,\u201d Armstrong wrote.<\/p>\n

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Brian Armstrong attends Consensus 2019 at the Hilton Midtown on May 15, 2019 in New York City. <\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Political tensions had reportedly been simmering inside Coinbase for months before Armstrong\u2019s initial post. Several employees staged a virtual walkout on June 4 after Armstrong said in a meeting that issuing a statement in support of Black Lives Matter would be divisive, according to Axios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Armstrong later apologized for how he handled the issue and pledged to update the company\u2019s diversity plan, reports said. He also reportedly backed the Black Lives Matter movement in a series<\/a> of tweets \u2014 but they app<\/a>ear to have been deleted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve decided to speak up,\u201d Armstrong said in the now-deleted tweetstorm. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame that this even needs to be said in this day and age, but racism, police brutality, and unequal justice are unequivocally wrong, and we need to all work to eliminate them from society.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Armstrong stood by his decisions to avoid politics this week as he took Coinbase public in a watershed moment for the crypto industry, telling The Wall Street Journal<\/a> that it was one of his most important actions last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of other problems in the world, and we can all probably at Coinbase acknowledge those problems, but we don\u2019t always agree on what the actual solution is to those problems,\u201d he told CNBC<\/a> in a Wednesday interview.<\/p>\n

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A man holds a Black Lives Matter flag during the protest \u201cFamilies Supporting Families Joins Mass Action 4 George Floyd Justice 4 All Nationwide Protest\u201d in St.Paul, Minnesota, on March 6. <\/figcaption>
AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy point of view is that companies today with great intentions can sometimes end up creating division and kind of actually unwelcoming environments internally by engaging in some of these issues.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n