| Fred Ehrsam | |
| Birth Name: | Frederick Ernest Ehrsam III |
| Birth Date: | 10 May 1988 |
| Birth Place: | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Education: | Duke University |
| Occupation: | Co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm |
| Known For: | Executive, entrepreneur, co-founder of Coinbase |
| Website: | www.fredehrsam.org |
Frederick "Fred" Ernest Ehrsam III[1] is an American business executive and investor who is the co-founder and former managing partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm. He is also the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.[2]
Ehrsam was born on May 10, 1988, in Boston, growing up in Concord, Massachusetts.[3] He played video games professionally in high school, and was an avid World of Warcraft player, which introduced him to the concept of in-game digital currencies.[4] [2]
In 2010, Ehrsam graduated with distinction from Duke University, earning a B.S. in computer science with a minor in economics.[5] At Duke, he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.[6] [7]
After graduating from Duke, Ehrsam became a foreign exchange trader at the investment bank Goldman Sachs in New York.[2] [8] He learned about Bitcoin from a Georgetown University professor's paper, and began trading in his free time.[4]
See main article: Coinbase.
In 2012, Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong co-founded Coinbase in an apartment in San Francisco, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins and other digital currencies.[9] [4] The two met on the Bitcoin subreddit forum.[4] Ehrsam served as Coinbase's first President.[10] Ehrsam reportedly reached out to his alma mater Duke to invest in Coinbase's 2015 Series C. He increased Duke's initial investment a hundredfold.[11] In January 2017, he announced he was leaving the company, but would remain on its board.[9] He also reportedly still owned 8.9% of Coinbase stock as of April 2021, and was assigned to the company's audit committee before its April 2021 public offering.[10]
Ehrsam was featured as one of the main protagonists in the 2020 novel "Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street."[12]
Ehrsam is also an inventor and together with Brian Armstrong and Julian Langschaedel has registered a few patents with the USPTO. The patents main focus is on bitcoin transactions.[13]
In 2018, Ehrsam co-founded cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm with former Sequoia Capital investor Matt Huang.[14] They founded the company to invest in cryptocurrencies and the companies that focus on that market, and became the firm's managing partners.[15] [16] As of October 2020, the company had made 28 investments in cryptocurrency-related companies.[14]
On November 15, 2021, Paradigm closed the largest-ever cryptocurrency venture capital fund at the time. The fund raised a total of $2.5 billion to invest in nascent cryptocurrency and Web3 projects.[17]
In October, 2023, Ehrsam stepped down from his managing partner role at Paradigm and announced he will continue to act as a general partner.[18]