Fred Ehrsam

Fred Ehrsam is a businessman, investor, and software developer from the United States. He is best known as the co-founder and managing partner of the cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, as well as the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase

Personal Stats

Age:	34
Source of wealth:	Entrepreneur
Residence:	USA
Citizenship:	USA
Marital status:	Unknown
Education:	Duke University

Education

Ehrsam graduated from Concord-Carlisle High School in Massachusetts in 2006. In 2010, Ehrsam earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science with a minor in economics from Duke University. He was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Duke University.

Career

After completing his studies at Duke, Fred Ehrsam began his career as a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs in New York. While working there, he discovered Bitcoin through a paper written by a professor at Georgetown University and began trading in his spare time.

In 2012, Ehrsam teamed up with Brian Armstrong to create Coinbase, a San Francisco-based platform that allowed cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade digital currencies like Bitcoin. The two had met on the Bitcoin subreddit forum. Ehrsam took on the role of Coinbase's first President and even persuaded Duke University to invest in the company's 2015 Series C, ultimately increasing their initial investment by a hundredfold.

In January 2017, Ehrsam stepped down as President but remained on Coinbase's board of directors. As of April 2021, he still owned 8.9% of Coinbase stock and served on the company's audit committee before its public offering that same month.

In 2018, Ehrsam co-founded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment firm, with former Sequoia Capital investor Matt Huang. The company's aim was to invest in cryptocurrencies and businesses that focused on the cryptocurrency market. Ehrsam and Huang became the firm's managing partners, and as of October 2020, the company had made 28 investments in cryptocurrency-related businesses.

On November 15th, 2021, Paradigm raised $2.5 billion to invest in nascent cryptocurrency and Web3 projects, making it the largest-ever cryptocurrency venture capital fund at that time.

Personal Life

Ehrsam was born in Boston on 10 May 1988 and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. In high school, he played the World of Warcraft video game professionally, which exposed him to the concept of in-game virtual currencies.